Do You Want to Live Forever?

When the concept of living forever comes up, many people automatically say they would hate that. If given the chance, they would turn down eternal life for eternal death (or whatever mystery happens when we die). But, just for a moment, imagine you could live forever. How would you spend your time? 

I think living forever would both be the most magical and magnificent thing to ever occur, but also the most depressing and tragic reality one could dream up. By living forever, you would understand the full extent of the human experience. You’d have the opportunity to meet nearly every single person on the planet and would have the time to forge deep connections with everyone that you encounter. But, you’d also have to master the art of letting go. Watching everyone you love and care about die right before your very eyes (over and over again), especially going through this experience alone is probably the greatest depth of despair a human being could possibly endure. 

Not only would you understand fundamentally the full range of human emotions, but you’d also have the opportunity to learn everything. In my short lifetime, I’d like to learn as much as possible, but this time is nothing compared to eternity. You could travel to every single place on the planet, read every book ever written, learn every single language ever spoken, watch every single movie, master every single art form, and really just do everything. This sounds tempting to me, to say the least. 

Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, imagine just for a moment that God (or insert here whatever your religion calls God) is real. He (although I think that God would be something greater than gender, I’ll just use ‘he’ for simplicity’s sake), at least so it says in the Bible, is an all knowing entity. He has this great knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, understands fundamentally what the entire universe is on this supernatural level. His knowledge is so complete that it makes me wonder what sort of insights one would develop along the way if they knew it all.

Would the insights stop when there is nothing left to learn? Are insights a part of the learning experience? If you already know everything, then is there anything left to do? 

But I suppose that all of these questions are posed with the idea that knowledge is the ultimate reason for life. For existence. Maybe that’s the meaning of life. You have to choose which knowledge you’d like to attain, because it’s not really possible to know everything in such a short period of time, and then leave knowing that no matter how much you know, you really know little to nothing in relation to the entire universe. 

It’s a little depressing, huh? To know that you’ll never know everything. I found a brief website that explains this idea a little bit further (don’t worry, it’s just a couple of illustrations to prove a point): http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ Even the PhD student who spends years of her life mastering a single specialty still lacks knowledge in fundamental ways, even in her own field! 

I want to return to the loneliness aspect of living forever, for just a moment. As I said before, you’d have to watch everyone you love and care about die in front of you, essentially going through this experience alone. But, would you really be alone for it? There would always be more people to go through the experience with you. The only thing that you’d truly have to experience alone is the living forever part. But, from here, we must ask what it really means to be “alone?”

I think, in life, no matter how many people may be around us, we are still experiencing everything through our own eyes. Our perception is unique to us, and nobody could ever fully understand how we view the world no matter how hard we attempt to explain our point of view. That being said, even in the limited lifetimes we currently have, we are experiencing them alone. We were born alone, we feel our emotions alone, we live alone in the confines of our own mind, and we ultimately die alone. Really, being alone is all we ever know. As much as we try to delude ourselves into thinking that we are not, reality cannot lie to us. 

Maybe it’s a tad depressing to think about these things, but life is suffering, right? Or, in the least, a part of life has gotta be suffering. We cannot take that away. Living forever would just be suffering forever (but also knowing, loving, understanding, etc. forever).

If given the chance to live forever, I don’t know if I’d take it or not. This responsibility is too large for my limited brain to handle. But, if I were to live forever, I know how I’d spend my time.

*** I read a book about this idea and it was amazing! Highly recommend: The time keeper by Mitch Albom https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-time-keeper_mitch-albom/247196/#isbn=1401322786&idiq=244302 ***

*** Also shout out to my good friend Stan for starting a conversation about this with me and inspiring my blog post! If you read Dutch (or know how to use Google Translate), he has a blog that details his travels through South Africa with his best friend, Helen: http://helensten.nl/about.html ***