Reflecting on the early death of Amy Winehouse, David Berreby reminds us that a long life isn't necessarily a good life and that a life can be good even though very brief. It's hard to quarrel with this. He assembles the considerations supporting it. Lives of great achievement sometimes don't last very long but are remembered down the ages. Very old people can end up incapacitated in various unappealing ways. And according to a study (Berreby points out), happy and optimistic people tend to die sooner than people 'living conscientiously and bringing forethought, planning, and perseverance to [their] professional and personal life'.
Taking all this into account he asks, 'Why do we think longevity so natural and right?' I have a couple of observations to offer. I don't think many people do regard what have become current standards of longevity as natural, if by 'natural' we mean purely nature-governed and universal. They plainly aren't that. They're historically recent. As for regarding them as right, if we take it in this context to mean good, there's an obvious reason why a longer life is generally preferred to a shorter one. Life is possibility, and a longer life a continuation of possibility whereas its early termination sort of closes that down. From the 'outside', one might recognize a short life as having been in some sort a good life, and conversely there are long lives that not only aren't good but extremely harmful to other lives. From the 'inside', however, people want longer life because except in dire circumstances they want life. And who can blame them? (Via.)
