The other day... I saw her, the manager, she's... maybe early fifties? I don't know, that age where it all just... hits you, I guess. She was in the break room, hunched over her phone, scrolling and scrolling... and I just had this feeling, a strong one, you know? That familiar ache in your chest like you've seen this before, felt this before. Like she was looking at those life expectancy calculators. I used to do that. Still do, sometimes, late at night when the city is quiet but my mind isn't. Comparing. Always comparing. My habits now, the kale smoothies I force down, the Fitbit steps I meticulously track... to my grandfather. His smoking, two packs a day, unfiltered Lucky Strikes... and he lived to be ninety-two. A robust nonagenarian, they called him. Died in his sleep, peaceful. No major illnesses, just... ran out of time, like a battery finally flat. And here I am, practically a poster child for preventative medicine... (though my cholesterol is still stubbornly elevated, a constant source of low-grade anxiety for my cardiologist) ...and I wonder if it even matters. If all this striving, this constant vigilance against mortality, is just... an exercise in futility. Or a cognitive distortion, maybe, like anticipatory grief for a future that hasn't arrived. I remember his hands, stained yellow from nicotine, strong hands though, he built that house in Queens almost entirely himself... the one we had to sell for pennies when the market crashed, another one of life's little cruelties. He ate what he wanted, drank what he wanted, never worried about glycemic indexes or intermittent fasting. And he outlived so many who did. It just makes you wonder about the stochastic nature of it all... the sheer randomness. She probably thinks she’s in control. That if she just analyzes enough data, she can somehow manipulate the outcome. I used to think that too. That if I could just *understand* the variables, I could bend them to my will. But life, this unpredictable, beautiful, awful thing... it just keeps going, doesn't it? Regardless of how many online questionnaires you fill out or how much you compare your current lipid panel to the ghost of a grandfather’s long-gone habits. And the rent is still due, always due, even when you're just sitting there, calculating your statistical probability of existing next year... it’s a funny old world.