The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer. - Atul Gawande

you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.

The value of autonomy … lies in the scheme of responsibility it creates: autonomy makes each of us responsible for shaping his own life according to some coherent and distinctive sense of character, conviction, and interest. It allows us to lead our own lives rather than be led along them, so that each of us can be, to the extent such a scheme of rights can make this possible, what he has made himself.

Yet — and this is the painful paradox — we have decided that they should be the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days.

Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.