Do you want to live forever?

Living forever has its perks. You have plenty of time when you have all time.

Time to learn every musical instrument. Time to read every book. Time to write every book. Time to hear every song, see every animal, travel to every country, taste every food.

But living forever also means suffering forever. Even if the the person/object that bestowed you with immortality also blessed you with invincibility, impenetrable skin, and a god-like immune system, you would still grieve the loss of loved ones who are not immortal.** The solution is to never love again, but what is a lonely life worth? I say this as someone who is so severely introverted it’s almost a handicap — there is a difference between choosing time to be alone and being lonely. With no loved ones or friends whatsoever, life would become tired quickly. Once you accomplished everything possible, with no one to share it with, eventually the brain would revert to simple survival. Breathe, eat, sleep. But what is survival when there is nothing to survive? You’re immortal. Eating and breathing and sleeping no longer matter.

Can you see yourself thousands of years from now, staring into the void? Breathing and wishing you could stop? That choice having been taken away before you realized what forever really feels like?

I would love an extended life. A thousand years would be plenty of time to do everything I want to do. But not forever. Never forever. Eternal sleep is a blessing, even though we fear it.

** What if all my loved ones are also immortal?

Think about every little thing about them that annoys you. Easy to brush off now. Even quirky. Thousands and thousands of years of this. You cannot change them. One thing we know about people is they get set in their ways and often would rather leave than allow someone to nag them into changing. Either way, losing loved ones or being with them forever, it ends in loneliness.