immortality | Bertram's Blog

Do You Want to Live Forever?

January 13, 2023 — Pat Bertram

I sure as heck don’t want to live forever! In fact, I so much don’t want to live forever that I don’t think about it. The only reason it’s on my mind now is that the title of this post was the blog prompt for today.

To be honest, I can’t think of anyone granted immortality who was pleased with the dubious gift. Of course, these “anyone”s who were granted such a gift are by nature fictitious, since as far as I know, there is no living creature who lives forever. Well, this is a certain jellyfish that can revert to an earlier stage of their lifecycle, which can keep them going forever. Amoebas are considered immortal because they divide in two and so the parent doesn’t die but exists as two daughter cells. And then there are prions . . .

Okay, so there are living things that live forever, but except for the case of a stray alchemist or two (such as the Count of St. Germaine who supposedly found the philosopher’s stone and so attained immortality) the only humans who have become immortal on Earth are fictional ones. And those stories seldom end well.

For example, a long time ago I heard a theory that humans were a sort of preternatural ape embryo that managed to continue developing without ever turning into an ape. To support their supposition, theorists pointed to such human characteristics as hairless bodies, wide-spaced eyes, large heads, and a tendency to play that extends far beyond childhood. A short story based on this theory featured a scientist who found a way to become immortal, and instead of having a great life, he was eventually discovered living as an aged ape in his basement. Apparently, he lived long enough so that he grew out of his embryonic state. Not a pleasant way to live forever!

Vampires live forever, but those fangs, red lips and pallid skin are so not a good look. Sleeping in a coffin and never seeing the sun seems like a recipe for a massive year-round case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. And that lust for blood? Let’s not even go there.

One of the biggest cautionary tales for not living forever is the movie Death Becomes Her. After being granted immortal life, both Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep do not heed the advice to take care of themselves, so they spend the rest of eternity trying to put themselves together. That’s enough to make a person shudder! (Except not really. This is the only role Meryl Streep ever did that I enjoyed.)

From a reader’s point of view, living forever would be untenable. Can you imagine reading a book that never ends? That goes on and on long after you got tired of what would soon become nothing but a series of insipid events? What a horrendously boring book that would be! Living an earthly life forever would be the same. Assuming, of course, that you could remain young and healthy and rich enough to keep yourself going century after century after century. Unless you were like the immortal jellyfish and could reset your cells back to an earlier time, you would grow older. And older. And older. And older. Ad infinitum. Eventually you would be too old to appreciate anything, would be ready to be shucked of your worthless body and decaying mind and would still find no surcease. And chances are, you’d get sick or break bones or get some sort of debilitating disease, and there would be no blessed release to your pain. Who knows, you might even end up in jail with a life sentence, and then, what a horror story that would be!

Even assuming that you managed to stay free and young and healthy and rich forever, then what? There would be no reason to do anything. As writers, we know how important a ticking clock is. Without a ticking clock to impel a character to solve the mystery or reach the end of a quest or whatever, there wouldn’t be much of a story. I imagine life without a ticking clock would be much the same. There’d be no reason to do anything. Of course, perhaps even for centuries, you could travel and learn and try all sorts of new experiences, and once that’s all done, then what? Eternal boredom?

Luckily, this is merely a rhetorical question, though millions, perhaps billions of dollars are being spent every year to unlock the mystery of mortality. Some scientists theorize that immortality was once the default state, and that death was “naturally selected for,” as they say, because apparently death conferred some sort of benefit on a species where individuals could die. (After all, evolution is not about a single organism but a species.)

Anyway, all that being said, would you want to live forever?

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, history/myth, life. Tags: blog prompt, Death Becomes Her, getting old forever, Golie Hawn, immortality, living forever, Meryl Streep. 2 Comments »

Fountain of Youth

March 31, 2021 — Pat Bertram

I’m reading a book about a group of scientists who discovered the so-called fountain of youth. I say “so-called” because it wasn’t a fountain, it was an injection of a substance that prevented telomeres from malfunctioning or wearing out. From what I understand, telomeres are a compound structure at the end of chromosomes that keep the long strands of DNA from getting tangled during cell replication. When they malfunction, you get cancer. When they wear down, you grow old. Apparently, if there is a way to keep telomeres at peak performance, you won’t get cancer, won’t grow older, won’t get any of the diseases of old age. You wouldn’t be immortal, of course, since you could die from any number of other causes, such as car accidents or non-DNA-related diseases. And I suppose you’d have to be especially careful of yourself to keep from being like the women in the movie Death Becomes Her.

Although it was an interesting premise, the story breaks down because the only way this group of exceedingly smart “immortals” thought of to keep their eternal youthfulness from being discovered is to find younger doppelgangers every twenty years or so, kill them off, and take over their identity. Ignoring the immorality and illegality of such a drastic solution, there would be myriad problems, such as fingerprints not matching. (I almost didn’t get my driver’s license renewed because my thumbprints didn’t match. They finally figured out that the previous thumbprint was printed at the tip rather than the meat of the thumb like the current print.)

It reminded me of a novel I once planned to write. I’d have to check my notes to find out why this particular character didn’t age (I think it had to do with a project they were working on that killed everyone else in the lab and left her unable to get older), but I do remember the first scene. She’s in a stall in a restroom while people she knows are primping at the mirror and talking about her, something to the effect of, “Who is she trying to kid? All that makeup she wears doesn’t fool me. She’s nowhere near as young as she pretends to be.” The character in the stall realizes it’s time to move on because the truth is she is trying to hide her age. The heavy make-up is to make her look older rather than younger.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Mostly I’m wondering if such a serum were available, would you take it? Would you want to be eternally young? To live forever, or as forever as possible?

I wouldn’t, though to be honest, I wouldn’t mind finding a true fountain of youth. I wouldn’t drink the water, though I might bathe my cheeks to plump them up (I don’t mind my wrinkles, but the crepey skin on my cheeks is sort of creeping me out.) And I’d like to bathe my legs in the water to keep them young, but for the rest of it, not so much.

In a way, I’m viewing the experience of aging the same way I now view grief. Although grief was utterly painful and angst-ridden while it had me in its grip, I’m glad I had the experience. It was way beyond anything I could have ever imagined, way beyond anything I’d ever read about. I tend to think aging is the same. As long as a self-aware person retains her ability to think and can process what she is thinking and feeling, it could be (and is) interesting to see some of the changes — not just physically but mentally and emotionally.

Besides, I think eternity could be utterly boring. I mean, what do you do with eternity? It’s the same thing I’ve wondered about when it comes to after-death eternity, though with pre-death eternity, at least you have a body to do things with, emotions to experience, things to see and hear and taste, but after a while, all things pall.

Even more than that, either you stay away from people entirely and miss out on the joy of love and friendships, or you remain alive while everyone you know and will ever know ends up dead. All that grief would be too much to handle, and if it isn’t, if one can lose and keep on losing without ever being affected, would life be worth living?

I guess I’m lucky in that I won’t ever have to make this choice, though in a certain sense, I make it every day because every day I do something to try to improve my life, my body, my mind. As far as I know, that’s all anyone can do without having access to a fountain of youth.

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