i do not want to live forever. i look forward to dying when i feel i am prepared, but i recognize death can come whenever.
one of my favorite quotes is from thomas lindberg, the ex-singer of death metal band at the gates:
"i'm free to die when i wish. i'm born from scarlet songs, and when the time is right i shall forever walk alone."
i agree with this statement. i dunno about the scarlet songs..but i am free to die when i wish.
a short story i read by Jorge Luis Borges entitled "The Immortal" deals with the issue of immortality. In it he writes "In Rome, i spoke with philosophers who felt that to draw out the span of a man's life was to draw out the agony of his dying and multiply the number of his deaths."
i would find it unbearable to exist unchangingly in a perpetually changing world.
he goes on to describe a city of immortals.
he postulates that eventually everything will happen to every man in that city. in this light all acts are simultaneously justified and unimportant, and every man will deserve every reward or punishment because what has happened in the past or what will happen in the future. in this scenario the acts of the present must be judged in context of the totality of an immortals lifespan which is infinite. in the world of the mortal there is the constant fear of irrevocable acts (such as death) or of events not happening. In the world of the immortals this disappears and is replaced with a sense that every act is a mirror of others that preceded it and will succeed it.
"no one is someone; a single immortal man is all men."
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