a profusion of days, a waste of longevity

When one reflects on the state of this strange being [a tortoise], it is a matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its existence in a joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months together in the profoundest of slumbers.

—Rev. Gilbert White: The Natural History of Selborne.

To one of middle age the countenance was that of a young man, though a youth might hardly have seen any necessity for the term of immaturity. But it was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so many years as its age than of so much experience as its store. The number of their years may have adequately summed up Jared, Mahalaleel, and the rest of the antediluvians, but the age of a modern man is to be measured by the intensity of his history.

—Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native.

It would be neat if lifespan were not determined by biological age, but instead by "intensity of history". That is, people who drive Ferraris, hunt elephants and lions in the savannah, and routinely bed beautiful women, would consume their lives faster than those who spend their weekends alone at home, watching TV and eating pizza. At the time of their deaths, all persons would have had the same total amount of fun. This is the only equality that counts, really.

But two assumptions are neccessary for it to work. First, that eating pizza in solitude conveys a positive amount of fun -however small- and not a negative one. Second, that there exists a number N (possibly very high) such as that, when N or more pizzas are ingested throughout a series of solitary weekends, they convey an accumulated pleasure equal or superior to the one involved in bedding a beautiful woman during a one-night-stand. (It may well be that sexual pleasure is measured in real numbers, while pizza pleasure is measured in infinitesimals.)