What do you want to be made of, when the meat fails and the curtain doesn’t rise again?

 

You will die.

There’s no glitter here. No hopeful Instagram filter to soften the glare. No TED Talk punchline, no therapeutic euphemism, no legacy journal full of self-affirming platitudes. Just the bleak, elegant fact that one day your breath will hitch, the light will go out, and whatever you are will return to static. You. Me. The bastard from procurement. Your kids. The family dog. All of us, rotting meat with a deadline. Death wins.

But if you don’t go out like James Dean in a blaze of nihilist glory or Paul Walker wrapped around carbon-fiber dreams, chances are you’ll linger. You’ll stick around long enough to join the final tribe. The ancient ones. The leftovers. The rattling few who outlived relevance, youth, beauty, and possibly even dignity.

You will become decor. A sentimental relic wheeled into family gatherings for ceremonial applause, kissed on the cheek, then quietly escorted back to your thermal tomb with a subscription to your preferred catheter supplier. Your legacy? A living monument to decline.

This final phase of existence—don’t kid yourself—is not some gentle descent into wisdom and reverence. It is a parade of indignities, punctuated by fatigue. Your epic journey becomes a shuffle from bed to toilet, a tightrope walk with a soiled finale. Fashion becomes anything soft, stain-resistant, and forgiving. Meals? Fuel. Textureless paste shoveled in to keep the organs limping along.

Your universe contracts to a glowing rectangle. You will nod off during documentaries, sitcoms, QVC reruns, and possibly your own name being called. It doesn’t matter what’s on; your brain has become a sponge full of old water. Entertainment is now sedation.

You’ll live for the warm days because the cold is treason. It crawls up your joints like regret. Doctor’s appointments will become your social calendar. Pissing without collateral damage will be a personal Everest. And sleep—sleep will be a rare, mythical visitor, arriving only after hours of staring at the ceiling, bargaining with the ghosts.

And in those suspended hours, if your brain hasn’t yet turned to porridge, you might come to a terrible realization:

You were trained for this.

From your first school desk to your last office cubicle, you were conditioned. Groomed for compliance. Trained to obey. To chase status. To collect badges and nod politely at the right rituals. You played the game. You kept your head down. You did what was expected. You updated LinkedIn like a good little corporate soldier. You followed the scripts.

And for what?

Now, at the end, you see it. The smoke. The emptiness. The desperate charade of it all. No encore. No payoff. Just decay. Just waiting.

You’ll wish, with a hollow, furious ache, that you’d once—just once—stopped to ask: What sets me on fire?

Not metaphorically. Literally. What fills you with dangerous, irrational purpose? What makes you feel alive in that mad, unrepeatable way that doesn’t require applause, permission, or a fucking KPI?

In Ikiru, the 1952 Kurosawa film, a paper-stamping civil servant, played by Takashi Shimura—not Ken Watanabe, though he later echoed the role—receives a terminal diagnosis and finally sees the farce for what it is. He doesn’t dive into hedonism. He tries to do something meaningful, something real. But it’s too late. He has already spent the best of himself on protocol and paperwork. His final act is noble, yes—but haunted. It’s soaked in that unbearable if only.

And you—when your skin turns thin and your dignity depends on how discreet your nurse is—will not wish you’d answered more emails. Or closed that one last deal. Or upgraded your Tinder matches. You’ll wish you’d left behind something with weight. Not prestige. Not a yacht. Something true.

A calling. That singular, unreasonable thing that doesn’t need explaining. It doesn’t show up on résumés. It doesn’t trend. It burns. It’s often unprofitable. Often unnoticed. But it’s the only thing that isn’t ash.

And if, like me, you’re past 50, this might be your last exit before the slow spiral. You still have time. A sliver. But it’s narrowing. Most won’t take it. Most will nod sagely, maybe post a quote on Facebook, and return to their soul-deadening routines. That’s fair. Oblivion is comfortable. Mush is easy. The collapse of one’s ambitions and dreams has its own lullabies.

But if you’re still reading this, odds are you’re not one of them.

You’ve faced the wall. Maybe you’ve stared down the barrel of a midlife crisis that didn’t come with a sports car or an affair—just a sinking, wordless dread. You’ve walked with depression. You’ve flirted with self-loathing. You’ve measured yourself and come up lacking, in spite of all your gold stars.

You still fantasize. About being rich. Respected. Desired. You still imagine the parties, the lovers, the applause. But something in you knows it’s hollow. The ghost in the machine is restless.

You’re not ancient yet. But you’re close enough to see it on the horizon. And unless you’ve got Hefner’s bankroll to rent eternal adolescence, the body will say no. You’ll need a different fire.

Hef had his bunnies, sure. But let’s be honest—he was a mummy in a silk robe. That wasn’t living. That was theater. I don’t envy him. I wonder what he thought when the lights dimmed and the playboys went home. Maybe he, too, stared into the dark and found it unamused.

Most of us won’t have that luxury of illusion. We’ll need something deeper. Something that doesn’t require vitality—only presence. A calling that survives the betrayal of the body.

The youth cult won’t do that. You can try all you like to look young again—Botox, hairpieces, forced smiles, dynamic dances, designer labels, ultra-sophisticated makeup. It won’t help. You’ll look desperate. Worse, you’ll feel desperate. Because you’re chasing a dream that can never come back. You’re trying to compete at a level that has already left you behind.

And you may have clung to the ultimate drug like an addict to his dealer—the myth of later. The one thing that whispers us down with “There is still time.” You’ll do everything, all of it, after you retire. It’s the last great hit of hopium. But by then, even if you aren’t yet physically or mentally decrepit, lighting the flame may prove too much. Because yes, it takes time to fan the fires of purpose—even if the flame is just to watch ants working in the forest.

Starting that at 50+ is an effort. But by 60+, the hill may have become a mountain. Habit dies slow and ugly. And if your purpose is anything more than distraction—if it’s a calling, a legacy of sorts—then ask yourself how it will fare in a world already on fire. If you’re not in the game by the time you hit the half-century mark, you probably won’t get in at all.

Yes, you might tell yourself the story of Colonel Sanders. But what are the odds you are the one man out? And given those odds, are you still willing to bet? Because the price for failure isn’t a bruised ego or a cleaned-out bank account. The price is knowing—with absolute certainty—that the long, slow descent into solitary confinement has begun, and there will be no way back.

My father had his bicycle. And his firewood. It wasn’t grand. It wasn’t legacy-grade. But it was real. It kept his blood moving. It made him feel useful. He was still out running errands at 88. Then COVID hit. His routines vanished. His star went out. I believe he died of inertia. Not disease.

So if you’re like me, dragging your battle-scarred carcass past the half-century mark, don’t pick a calling that relies on muscle. Or beauty. Or even lucidity. Pick something that remains yours, even if you’re confined to a chair with pudding in your beard.

Maybe it’s wonder. That’s a good one. Childlike wonder. Seeing the world again through beginner’s eyes. Like Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, tumbling out of the sky to interrogate our sad, grown-up rules. Maybe, in the end, the only defense against decay is curiosity.

But start now.

Hone it now.

Because if you wait too long, you won’t be able to hold the blade.

So. One last question. The only one that counts.

What are you made of?

Or more honestly—

What do you want to be made of before you disappear?