Ever since I turned thirty, I have often said — part joke, part confession — “I shall die young.”
It was the sort of remark that would bring a hush to the room.
Some laughed awkwardly, others quickly changed the subject, unsure whether to hear it as dark humour or quiet melancholy.
Most dismissed it as a touch of theatrical flair — the kind of thing one says to sound poetic or profound.
But I was never joking.
I never meant to predict an early death, nor to indulge in fatalism.
It was a declaration of intent — a stubborn refusal to let the soul grow old, even as the body, inevitably, would.
Now that I am sixty-six, I still say, “Do not worry — I shall die young!”
It sounds like a quip now, but it has never been one.
To “die young” has always meant, for me, to preserve a kind of inner vitality: curiosity, irreverence, the capacity for wonder, the appetite for change.
It means resisting the slow hardening that comes with resignation, bitterness, or routine.
My plan has always been simple:
to die young — as late in life as possible.
To live a long life, yes, but not to dim.
To grow older, certainly, but never grow old.
To remain open, alert, and unfinished.
No, I never wished for a short life — only one that stayed vivid.
To grow older without stiffening, to carry the weight of years without letting them weigh me down.
There is a kind of youth that no calendar can measure: it lives in how we move through the world, how we think, how we remain open to surprise.