Every day I look at the day’s Wikipedia entries. And I especially focus on what famous people had a birthday today.
For the longest time I really had no idea why I was doing this. Occasionally I would find out about some fascinating person I had not known about, but I knew that wasn’t really the reason.
Today I finally figured it out. When you go through the birthdays of famous people, you see a recurring pattern.
At first, they are all dead people. Then you get to a transition period where some of them are dead and others are still alive. At last you get to the recent birthdays, where pretty much everyone is still alive.
I think I’ve been looking for someone — anyone — who managed to escape. Has there been even one person who didn’t inevitably leave this earth after living here for some number of decades?
So far I haven’t found anyone. Alas, sooner or later they all end up dying.
But I’m not giving up hope yet. Tomorrow there will be a new Wikipedia entry, and a chance to find out that at least somebody is beating the odds.