If you’re an investor, it’s a good time to be long on longevity. The longevity economy is projected to be worth $27 trillion by 2030. 

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are all in, investing in anti-aging research, biotechnology, and cryogenics.

World leaders are in too. In September, a hot mic captured Russia’s Vladimir Putin saying to China’s Xi Jinping that “In a few years, with the development of biotechnology, human organs can be constantly transplanted so that people can live younger and younger, and even become immortal.” To which Xi replied that “the prediction is that in this century humans may live to 150 years old.

Longevity is great—of course, we should use all the technology at our disposal to extend our healthspan as long as we can. But spoiler alert: we’re all going to die. And the danger of chasing the false promise of immortality is that we lose access to the very real and tangible lessons of mortality. Death is one of the most powerful tools we have to help us navigate life.

What the end of life can teach us

Joanna Ebenstein, author of Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life, sums up what death has to teach us: “The mystery of death has, for millennia, led us to ask the big, existential........

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