Personally, I would not jump out of an airplane unless a boot was planted in the small of my back, but then I'm not as adventurous as Verdun Hayes. Mr. Hayes is the British Second World War veteran who willingly leapt out of an airplane at the age of 101 and 38 days, thus becoming the oldest person in the world to perform a feat more closely associated with the recklessness of youth.
The details of Mr. Hayes's escapade were delightfully droll: He had been discouraged from skydiving by his wife, the Guardian reported, but once she died, the doors opened, so to speak. He was accompanied by family members, including his 50-year-old grandson. Mr. Hayes had broken the British record for oldest skydiver on his 100th birthday, but wanted greater glory. I imagine that once you've survived D-Day and your wife's sky-diving skepticism, very little else is truly frightening.
Mr. Hayes's leap was celebrated with the kind of patronizing awe that greets any centenarian who manages to do more than get out of bed and tie their own shoelaces. It's understandable: 100 once seemed unimaginably old, the age at which you get a party at a suburban banquet hall and a letter from the Queen. Now, there are so many centenarians it takes a staff of seven to write the Queen's birthday letters.
In the latest Canadian census, centenarians – people 100 or older – made up the fastest-growing demographic group. There are 8,230 of them (probably 8,000 of whom winced when they got a card that said, "You're 100 years young!"). That's almost a 42-per-cent increase from the 2011 census. Thanks to greater life expectancies, the number of centenarians could increase fourfold over the next 35 years.
The tendency has been to look at them as charming anomalies of nature, like elephants who have learned to knit. What we want from them is rear-view instruction: What have they learned? What are their secrets to longevity? My favourites are the ones who say "butter and whisky."
We rarely ask what they're up to now. What are their projects? Plans for the future? But that's precisely what we should be asking, considering how many people are not only productive, but magnificently so, in their 90s and beyond. The exquisite memoirist Diana Athill released a volume of essays called Alive, Alive Oh! at the age of 98. Cloris Leachman and Betty White, co-stars from The Mary Tyler Moore show, are vital presences onscreen in their 10th decades. (Actors seem to have a particular longevity gene, or perhaps it's an attention-hole that can never be filled: Even toward the end of his life, which came at the age of 96, John Gielgud would phone up his talent agent and say, "It's Johnny Gielgud here! Is there any work?")
At the age of 102, the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer was still coming into his office every day, working on major commissions, and smoking cigars like a fiend. Kirk Douglas used the opportunity of his 100th birthday to write an open letter denouncing Donald Trump and warning his countrymates of the danger his presidency would pose (age may bring wisdom, but alas, he could not persuade enough voters to believe him). Vera Lynn, the singer who lifted British spirits during the Second World War – perhaps Verdun Hayes listened to her records – recently released an album to coincide with her 100th birthday. It entered the British charts at No. 3, kept from the top only by the spotlight-hogging of Drake and Ed Sheeran.
One day in the future, with luck, some of us will be 100, and people will ask us about what we're working on or where we're volunteering, not whether yogurt keeps us young. A child born in 2007 in a Western country such as Canada has a 50 per cent chance of living to be 100, or older: That's an eye-opening statistic from the 2016 book The 100-Year-Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, professors at London Business School. This longevity "is a gift," the authors write, but also a crisis waiting to happen, because businesses, governments and individuals are ill-prepared to deal with a creaky population in a creakier world.
Instead of a traditional three-stage life – education, career and retirement – Ms. Gratton and Mr. Scott envisage a multistage arc, with different periods of work, skills training, leisure and family engagement. They imagine cross-generational friendships, late-in-life creativity, and an emphasis on intangible assets, such as relationships and experience, which would have people out working and studying rather than golfing for their last 30 years.
Pie in the sky? Maybe. An aging demographic is going to inevitably collide with a shrinking base of taxpayers. As well, grievous discrepancies in longevity, largely based on wealth and geography and access to health care, need to be addressed if everyone is to have the full pleasure of the 100-year life.
The centenarian hordes are coming – and yes, that does sound like the lamest horror movie at the multiplex. Some will skydive. Some will be in their labs. Some will pass on the benefit of their knowledge to younger colleagues. The ones who are healthy will count their blessings. And they won't be alone.