WHAT ARE THE ODDS YOU WILL BE ALIVE IN TEN YEARS?
(May/June 2006 Issue)

I wish I knew. Well, kinda. When I asked my highly specific wife, Linda, whether she would like to know the day and the hour, she answered not too seriously, "In my humanness, I’d like to be able to plan. I’d like to clean out my closet."

What about you? What if you knew how long you would live? First of all, would you want to? Would you really want to know how the last chapter of the story of your life plays out? Would you live differently if you knew? What if you had a physical for an insurance policy and were told you had a year to live? Would you rewrite the script for that year?

Well fortunately, from my point of view, we don’t know. The whole thing is an adventure in probabilities. And even the probabilities are shifting sands as new medical information and lifestyle news surfaces. One doctor says gain weight (my perfectly configured Linda was horrified to hear from her doctor that she should gain nine pounds!). One month later, Ken Cooper, my doctor, tells me (as he does each year), "I want to see less of you next year … ten pounds less." Sigh …

In any event, the occasion for these particular musings on this particular day (March 23) is that this is the day I found that according to a consensus of at least four expert doctors employed by insurance companies in consultation with Dr. Nina Radford, my cardiologist at The Cooper Clinic, they had concluded that there was an 86 percent chance that I would still be here in ten years. How do they know? Because based on the best modern medical science – every poking, prodding, sticking and scanning of my aging body that The Cooper Clinic can bring to bear on my heart, lungs and lower extremities – the "winning" insurance company in this dismal derby is willing to bet real money that there’s only a 14 percent chance they will have to pay off on a ten-year term insurance policy. Otherwise, they keep the premium, I continue purring along and they’re home scot free. And the insurance folks have built a risk premium in for themselves so the odds might be even a few points better for me.

All of this was occasioned by a very smart someone else making a major multi-year investment in the work of Leadership Network with only one condition. No board seat. No mandated frequent reports. The money only stops if I (Bob) die. That’s what caused me to look into insurance.

Well, as I said before, these are only probabilities and, fortunately, I don’t know. I could live to age 95 like my wonderful friend Peter Drucker, who was giving me advice for my next project when I last saw him less than two months before he "graduated" last November. Or I could be joining Peter and my son, Ross, tomorrow. The Bible has a lot to say about longevity, but the bottom line is always, "We don’t know. God does." For example: For the director of music. Of David. A psalm. Psalm 139 (NKJV)

Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

God trumps medical science. As the title of a book by the strange sage Buckminster Fuller reads, And It Came to Pass, Not to Stay. Nineteen years ago, the year after my son, Ross, died and I almost lost my own life in a plane crash that claimed the lives of four friends (the plane I didn’t take), I found myself in the lanai of Peter Drucker’s home. I had begun talking of estate planning when Peter abruptly
interrupted me. He said, "Bob, I know that you are feeling a sense of your own mortality now, but the truth is you will probably live another thirty years and they will be the best thirty years of your life." I was 48. He was 78. Here I was looking at someone almost exactly thirty years older than I, someone whose last five years (at that time) had been enormously productive. It was as if he had pulled me gently down to earth again saying, "Just put one foot in front of the other. Follow your calling. Do what you are supposed to do. Let God take care of the rest." Peter went on to publish fourteen more books and countless articles between that day and his death last year at 95.

As for me, I actually felt pretty happy with 86 percent odds for ten years. I certainly don’t intend to retire. I hope I will still be writing a new chapter of "my next book." on my ten-years-from-now birthday and I hope you will be there to receive it.

About Bob Buford
Bob Buford is chairman of the board of The Buford Foundation and Leadership Network, was the co-founder and first chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, and has authored four books, including Halftime and most recently Finishing Well. Visit www.ACTIVEenergy.net to register for Bob's ACITVEenergy weekly e-newsletter which is full of Bob Buford’s musing, interviews with world-changers, and resources that will enhance your life and work. Contact him as follows:
Bob Buford, 2501 Cedar Springs Road, Dallas, Texas 75201 USA.
214-754-9733; e-mail: bjengle@leadnet.org

After selling Buford Television, Inc., a large network of cable systems across the country, in July 1999, Bob Buford has turned to investing the remaining years of his life in the lives of others. He is chairman of the board of The Buford Foundation and Leadership Network, was the co-founder and first chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, and has authored three books, including Halftime and most recently Finishing Well, which can be found at bookstores everywhere. Bob and his wife, Linda, make their home in Dallas, Texas.