a hard question

Spending more time with our elderly neighbor has raised at least one important question for me already:

Whatever it is you live for, whatever gives you hope and inspiration, guidance in your choices, meaning for your actions... would it still be there for you, giving hope and guidance and meaning, if you were 90 years old, confined to a recliner or a bed, your spouse and the friends of your youth all deceased, your children moved away living their own lives, too frail to work and dependent on someone else to help you with even the most basic physical needs?

That situation is not uncommon, and for many people, their purpose for living can't endure that hard question. But shouldn't it be important to make sure ours can? And shouldn't that impact how we live now?