To me, the important thing about life is how you live it, not how long you live it for. I'd rather die tomorrow than die in a state of physical and emotional disrepair at eighty-five. Likewise, I'd take dying at forty over dying tomorrow, because I believe I will probably be in a better mental state when I'm forty and presumably still in possession of my facilities. What akuchi and Altmer said is true. Personally I'm afraid of being old; as immature as that sounds, it's a pretty common fear. No one wants to lose their independence and that's what youth is intrinsically linked to. Have you ever seen the way people die in nursing homes? People act like it's exaggerated but it honestly isn't. They are frightening places. I'd rather die in my own home with some relatives around me, instead of surrounded by other dying people, losing all my friends and even losing my mind. My great-grandmothers on my paternal side are both in their mid-nineties, and one is very frail and ill, and in hospital a lot =[, and the other is still sprightly and very sharp. She lives in her own home. I doubt she would live in a nursing home unless she wasn't.
I strongly believe in euthanasia in cases like akuchi said. It's a terrible thing when all you want is to finally die after a long life but being forced to live in total pain. I think at that point no one can argue living is the 'better thing', except legally they are required to, blah blah tangled euthanasia debate.
I think you guys underestimate how awful this would be. If the question was 'Would you rather die tomorrow or live to 85 in your own home?', I'd take my own home, no questions, but once I'm in a nursing home, I'm probably not going to be visited much, am probably going to be in a depressing place slowly becoming senile and watching everyone gradually disintegrate about me... I'm terribly afraid of being trapped, and to be trapped within my own body and own elderliness is an intolerable thought to me.
P.S. I am in bad health at fifteen due to various disorders, so odds are I will be pretty sick by the time I'm old, barring amazing technological advancements, so that of course adds bias to my decision. I admire you who still believe it is better to live; I do not admire you who complacently made the decision to live and dismissed concerns such as 'maybe my life won't be 'slightly' rubbish; it will be 'extremely' rubbish'. Odds are I'll be blind and deaf as well by then so yeah. I would like to have at least one of those sensory perceptions please. To me that would be the final straw. At eighty-five you can't really adapt to blindness the way you can when you're younger...