AS LIFESPAN INCREASES, SUFFERING MULTIPLIES
- Madhukar Dama
- May 23
- 5 min read
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I. INTRODUCTION: THE GREAT DECEPTION OF LONG LIFE
In a world obsessed with progress, longer life is paraded as proof of success.
Every government report, medical conference, and lifestyle advertisement repeats the same mantra: “People are living longer than ever before.”
But no one asks:
What kind of life are they living?
Is it a life of presence, peace, and purpose —
or a prolonged sentence of medications, machines, and meaninglessness?
This essay unfolds the uncomfortable truth:
As lifespan increases, suffering multiplies.
Not because life itself is painful —
but because we extended the body while ignoring the soul, the society, and the sanity.
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II. BIOLOGICAL EXTENSION VS. LIVED EXPERIENCE
Modern medicine has succeeded in extending the biological function of the human body.
Organs are replaced.
Hormones are manipulated.
Pain is numbed.
Heartbeats are maintained.
But what is left when:
The joints don't move?
The bladder leaks?
The eyes forget faces?
The mind repeats the same stories to strangers?
It is not life — it is biological survival at the cost of existential decay.
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III. THE MULTIPLICATION OF SUFFERING
1. PHYSICAL SUFFERING
The longer the body is kept alive:
The more it breaks.
The more it needs intervention.
The more it becomes a site of constant repair, not natural rhythm.
Bed sores.
Chronic pain.
Tubes, injections, surgeries.
Daily pills for pressure, sugar, cholesterol, digestion, sleep, and anxiety.
We no longer die of disease — we live inside it.
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2. EMOTIONAL SUFFERING
A longer life often means:
Outliving your spouse.
Outliving your friends.
Outliving your children’s interest in you.
What remains is a long, quiet ache:
Of being forgotten.
Of being reduced to a burden.
Of being talked about, but rarely talked to.
Grief used to be a season.
Now it’s a decade.
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3. MENTAL SUFFERING
Cognitive decline doesn’t wait for death.
It walks in silently — as memory loss, confusion, disorientation.
The old are kept alive,
but their sense of self dissolves.
They do not know where they are, who they are, or why they are still alive.
Society calls it dementia.
But often, it's just prolonged exposure to a meaningless life.
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4. SOCIAL SUFFERING
Modern culture has:
Shrunk families,
Isolated the elderly,
Outsourced care to institutions.
The longer you live:
The more distant your world becomes.
The less useful you are perceived.
The more invisible you become.
In rural communities, elders still sit under trees and share stories.
In cities, they stare at walls in care homes — sanitized, managed, and quietly erased.
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5. SPIRITUAL SUFFERING
In older cultures, death was a sacred transition.
Today, it is a problem to be postponed.
We resist it with:
Spiritual bypassing,
False hope,
Expensive rituals.
Old age used to be a time to let go.
Now it’s a time to keep holding on — to property, to status, to illusion.
And as people delay death,
they also delay peace.
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IV. THE SILENT COST OF EXTENDED LIFE
1. Financial Ruin:
Lifelong savings are drained to stay alive, not to live.
2. Family Breakdown:
Children burn out caring for parents who are biologically alive but emotionally gone.
3. Medical Exploitation:
Industries profit more from keeping you almost dead than actually dead.
4. Environmental Load:
Longer lives mean more waste, more consumption, more footprint.
What we call “progress” is often just postponed collapse.
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V. CULTURAL BETRAYAL
Elders once embodied wisdom.
Today they embody warnings.
We have betrayed them by:
Romanticizing longevity,
Ignoring quality,
Abandoning them in sterile apartments with life-support and television.
Their extended years are not a celebration of life —
they are a mirror reflecting our failure to live fully at every age.
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VI. THE MODERN MYTH OF LONGEVITY
We don’t fear death.
We fear a short life without proof of importance.
So we cling to:
Age as achievement.
Birthdays as milestones.
Retirement as victory.
We measure how long someone lived —
not how deeply, how truthfully, how naturally they lived.
And so, as lifespan increases,
suffering multiplies —
quietly, invisibly, and profitably.
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VII. CONCLUSION: TIME IS NOT LIFE
More years are not more life.
More medicines are not more healing.
More survival is not more meaning.
What we truly need is not a longer life —
but a freer, simpler, lighter, more connected life.
Because death never took life away.
It is we who stretched it beyond recognition —
until nothing was left but years.
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LONGER LIVING MEANS LONGER DYING
they call it
"blessing"
when a man lives past 80
but he hasn't sat cross-legged
in 12 years
his legs are swollen like wet logs
he pisses in a plastic bottle
his daughter-in-law changes the bedsheet
and looks away.
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in the old days
elders died quietly
under neem trees
after chewing paan
and telling their last story.
now they die
in three stages—
ICU, ventilator, and loan.
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you think we’re living longer?
no, we’re just
not allowed to die anymore.
not without signatures.
not without scans.
not without debt.
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my neighbour turned 91
every birthday they invite the priest
but his own voice
has stopped attending.
he sits like a leftover god
on an unused swing
looking at a television
he cannot hear.
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he once ploughed five acres barefoot
now his grandson orders biryani
on an app
and eats it in front of him
without offering a grain.
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we are told
longevity is divine.
but tell me—
what’s divine
about waking up
to soiled lungis, forgotten names,
dry mouths, and
cold rice?
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these extra years
don’t bring peace.
they bring
diagnosis.
appointment.
pharmacy.
surgery.
side effect.
follow-up.
you don’t grow older.
you get processed.
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my aunt’s husband died at 99.
the relatives said
“how lucky! what a life!”
but he hadn’t spoken
in three years.
he hadn’t bathed in a river
since Indira Gandhi.
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they say he "left peacefully"
but i saw him
tied to a hospital bed
as if death needed permission
from corporate insurance.
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our grandmothers
used to sing at dusk.
now they
count pills
by the light of
tube bulbs
in flats with grilled balconies
that trap air and memory.
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the TV shows say
“live longer with these tablets”
the babas say
“practice yoga and live 100”
the hospitals say
“admit now, save your father”
but no one says
what is he living for?
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i once asked
a 94-year-old ragi farmer
what scares him most.
he said:
“that i’ll die
hooked to machines
instead of holding mud.”
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you think our lifespans increased?
no, only our fears did.
our silence did.
our bills did.
our loneliness did.
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nowadays,
children send money
instead of visits.
and WhatsApp forwards
instead of hands on shoulders.
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a life that doesn’t end
becomes a burden.
not to god.
to family.
to self.
but society wants your breath
because
a breathing body
is an income stream.
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so stop telling me
he lived a full life
because his aadhar card said 92.
he lived a full life
until 62.
after that,
he just lasted.
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there’s no grace
in becoming a calendar reminder
for your grandchildren
to feel guilty once a year.
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in india,
a longer life
doesn’t mean
more celebration.
it means
more waiting.
for someone to visit.
for the catheter to be changed.
for death
to remember you exist.
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i don’t want
a long life.
i want
a real one.
like my thatha had—
ending under the sky,
with a cow nearby,
and the smell of jaggery in the air.
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don’t trap me in tubes,
don’t measure my worth in years.
just let me go
when my hands can no longer
hold the soil
that raised me.
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