my life expectancy

A curious and obscure factor in understanding my outlook on life, is my thoughts on my own life expectancy. A reasonable gauge of your likely lifespan is an examination of the relative who resembles you most, who died of natural causes. For me, this is my paternal grandfather Morty. No other male relative i've known has had a body type like my own...about 5'10", 140 pounds. Our only notable physical difference is that he had no ass. Spiritually, he and i had a similar sense of youthful fun. Morty didn't die of natural causes, though. Starting around the age of twelve, he smoked everyday for 68 years, as much as three packs a day. When he was eighty, his doctor told him he had emphysema. He never smoked again, and lived to ninety before the disease killed him. Aside from his lungs, he was in fine shape when he died, so if you take away the smoking there's no reason to think he wouldn't have sailed past the century mark.
Long before i thought about this comparison, i had the intuition that i would live for an extremely long time. I've always been conspicuously youngish for my age. My mental activity has always been varied and active, my physical activity has always been high, and my eating habits, while not the best in the world, are probably in the top 5%. (well, that macro-organic shit is a little out of my budget, and i do love the occasional Funyun). Add to all that the Morty factor, plus possible medical improvements down the road...and let's just say that i clearly remember the first time i read the age of the oldest undocumented human ever, a Civil War vet who lived to 136. Inside my reaction was yeah, i can knock that off.
I can't be 100% sure that somewhere in this equation the fear of death doesn't figure in. But mostly, i'm just happily enthusiastic at the prospect of laughing and creating and loving until 140 or so. This has always been one small factor in my Peter Pan outlook.
I'm looking forward to middle age, which should come rolling through sometime around 2040.