As the old sage Confucius is supposed to have observed around 500 BC, “A healthy man wants a thousand things; a sick man wants only one.”
Two and a half millennia later, that observation feels uncomfortably current. We are living longer, but we are not necessarily living healthier. New Zealand’s average life expectancy has risen by roughly 18 years over the last century—from about 65 years in 1926 to around 83 today.
