What if you knew the day you would die?
Everyone knows the exact date they will die. It’s printed on a card, and people plan their lives backwards from it.
The letter is on the kitchen table. It can wait until tonight.
1%chance it
ever happens
1%chance this ever happens
Could it actually happen?
Doctors can estimate risk from your age, your health and your habits, and insurers turn that into life expectancy tables. But none of it gives a date. A card that is always right would need knowledge medicine simply doesn’t have, and probably never will.
Day 1
A letter arrives with a date and nothing else. Many people open it at the kitchen table straight away, though plenty leave it until the evening.
By night, people with an early date have phoned someone they love. People with a late date don’t quite know what to do with the relief.
Year 1
Work, weddings and savings are all planned backwards from the card. Banks lend less to people with a near date. Employers aren’t allowed to ask, and some ask anyway.
Friends get better at turning up. They also get worse at knowing what to say.
Year 10
Kids know their parents’ dates the way they know their birthdays. A few families throw a party for the last year. Plenty never open the card at all, which the law allows.
In many kitchens the date sits on the fridge, next to the school timetable.
Who wins
- People who kept putting things offThe date ends the waiting.
- Families who make the most of itA last year can be spent on purpose.
Who loses
- People with an early dateLoans, jobs and even small talk change around them.
- SurpriseA long life used to be a hope. Now it’s a calendar entry.
- Anyone who looks at the card too oftenEvery day becomes a countdown.
The catch
Doctors can tell you your risks, not your date. Risk is a probability, and probabilities can be beaten. A printed date would be a promise no lab could keep, and most people say they wouldn’t want to read it anyway.
Would you want to know the date?
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