We were never supposed to live until 40. We were built to self-destruct at 30, whether from cancer or mental i... — Douglas Coupland

We were never supposed to live until 40. We were built to self-destruct at 30, whether from cancer or mental illness. We're all going way beyond our expiration date.

Author: Douglas Coupland

Insight: There's something darkly liberating about this idea, even if it's not scientifically precise. Coupland's pointing at a real shift: for most of human history, making it to 40 meant you'd beaten genuinely brutal odds. Now that we're routinely living into our 70s and 80s, our bodies and minds are running on systems designed for a much shorter lifespan. We're dealing with accumulated wear—arthritis, depression, burnout, degenerative diseases—that our ancestors rarely had to confront simply because they didn't stick around long enough. The twist is that this awareness can actually change how we think about our current struggles. If you're hitting 35 and feel like you're falling apart, that might not be a personal failing—it might be your body reaching a threshold it was never built to surpass. That's oddly freeing. It takes some of the shame out of aging or mental health struggles and puts it back on the evolutionary mismatch we're all living in. The real question becomes: now that we have this extra time, what do we actually want to do with it? We can't go back to shorter lifespans, but maybe recognizing we're beyond our original expiration date means rethinking what success looks like in these borrowed years.