Who Wants To Live Forever 2.024

Another year is soon to begin.  At any day during the next year each of us will celebrate or bemoan another birthday; often depending on where one is in the chronological ladder.    

Will our attitude about aging, dying or desire to live forever be different if, say, our average lifespan is 200 years, 500 years?  Or, put another way, what would our outlook be if we do not get past our twentieth birthday? 

"Well, your condition is serious but you can take comfort in the fact that nobody  lives forever".

 

"Who Wants To Live Forever" was a song recorded by a British rock group, "Queen" in 1986 which later became a theme song for the movie, "Highlander" which was about immortals battling each other over centuries of repeated encounters of varying identities or personas. 

A short book, more like a novelette, later made into a movie, “Logan’s Run”, tells a futuristic story of a society where people’s lives were “terminated” at the moment they were past their "Life-clock" that ended at their 21^st birthday (in the movie version the individual’s “Life-clock” was changed to end at 30, perhaps because producers could not find enough named young actors twenty one or younger. In fact, Michael York, the lead actor, was already 34 years old during filming).  The book was set in the year 2116 – that was exactly a hundred years from the year when I wrote the first version of this musing, seven years ago.  

Fantasy stories in that genre are an indication of society’s fixation on aging and ultimately the fear of dying. 

Today, data reveals that the average human lifespan has gone up considerably from 75 years ago. In the mid fifties to get to 60 years old was a significant marker. Today, mid-70s has become the average mean while more and more are getting past 80 and reasonably living a fair quality of life.  In most of Africa though, mid 50s is an average high.  Of the top 5 of the population with the longest lifespan, four are in Asia, only Switzerland is from the western world at no. 4.  The U.S. is at No.47.  Women outlive men by 4-5 years in any group.

Now, for perspective, in ancient times men were old and dying in their 30s and early 40s. Baby boomers realized not too long ago, growing up, that to be 60 years old was not only a retirement terminal  but that there was not much to be expected beyond that age.  Today, we’re told that sixty is the new forty or fifty, or whatever one desires it to be.

Then again, the tombstone below asks the question:

Here is the thing though.  We look across the whole spectrum of living things and we find life expectancy that can be very short as in the life of an individual microorganism to a very long one as in one bristlecone pine that is supposed to be 5065 years old (tree ring counts prove it). The mayfly, a breathing, metabolic insect lives only for a day!  As a mayfly, that is.  It is not only a fascinating life span but one that is so fleeting yet observable within a 24-hour period.  However, I must disclose that the mayfly has a previous life as a nymph living as an aquatic insect, its activities mostly underwater, which makes it a wonder of adaptation.  It could live as a nymph for years, a predator at that, before turning into a mayfly, to surface from its watery world, develop wings, mate, lay eggs and die within a day.

On the other hand a jellyfish is immortal.  It can keep on living unless eaten by predators or physically harmed in some other way.  It is in my opinion one of nature’s weird sense of humor because a jellyfish does not have a brain, let alone a structured backbone, with only a primitive sense of sight but with no ability to hear but it is endowed with immortality.   Tortoises can live up to 150 years, although a few were known to have lived beyond that. A bowhead whale will be just about middle age as the tortoise reaches its age limit.  

Why couldn’t humans have that gift? Here we are with our advanced brain power, an unlimited capacity to imagine, dream, and think up these wild questions about immortality and our lifespan is comparatively short-lived compared to these creatures that will never understand simple philosophical questions, let alone ask the basic meaning of their lives.  I know we ask and we propose answers or speculate or offer conjectures but undeniably we do not have answers to the meaning of life either.  But we try, anyhow.

Meanwhile, since the dawn of time we asked, we pondered, we philosophized, we developed over a hundred different expressions of faith in the form of religion. We’ve come up with natural and scientific explanations of the world around us, theorized about everything as we seek for answers and indeed we did get some but not all the answers. Into the future we can expect even more as we begin to remove the cloak of mystery on many unanswered questions but only to ask even more. 

Out of all the questions we can come up with, nothing is more compelling, more intriguing, or sometimes more frightening to ask than what happens after death. It is such that we’d rather use a phrase like “passing into the great beyond” or use the alternative substitute like the “afterlife” as a way of coping. 

We have no answers but I found someone who has an idea.  

Meet ELB, the Everlasting Being. 

He has knowledge of the natural world through science which includes math, biology and physics but he is indifferent to philosophy, morality, ethics, politics and religion.  Here is ELB and his thought provoking views of the world.  He will be talking to you. The italicized writings are all his.

“Hello, I am an Everlasting Being.  I am made of recycled material and because of that, more than anything else, I am immortal. The iron in my blood is recycled from billions of years ago when it was first created at the belly of a supernova. All of the iron we find on earth today came from an exploding star that was many times bigger than your present sun.  

I can't know for sure how old I am but if I have to guess I am at least 100,000 years old.

The simplicity of the universe is what makes me immortal and its complexity is proof that I am.

The universe may only seem complex but in reality it is very simple since everything in it – from viruses to mountains to clouds to the planets, stars and galaxies – came from one basic element: the hydrogen atom that has just one proton and one electron, the simplest element there is. The most abundant elements in the entire observable universe is made up of hydrogen and  helium - 99 % of all visible matter. 

Everything in me, everything around me is recycled. Even a single cell that “dies” is recycled; cancer cells included. Nothing anymore is created to add to the bulk or energy of the universe; but neither is anything ever deducted. What the universe has today is what it will have forever. However new something is, it has to come from somewhere or from components of something else. If today I am at the tip of an endless recycling process since everything begun then have I not always existed since?

The universe is matter, energy and information.  Where matter and energy are interchangeable, information exists to keep track of events caused by matter or energy or both.   If matter, energy and information in the whole universe are eternal I must conclude that I too must be eternal.

If I had settled the question of my physical immortality then it follows that I must address the immortality of my consciousness?  Is my consciousness immortal?  I must say that it is. If I am the only one right now who can contemplate or at the very least observe everything around me, the universe is what it is because I am here to marvel at or ponder it.  Without me to think about these things that surround me who is to say that they exist or not?  How do I know that my consciousness too is not recycled?  I cannot know that but the physical vessel where my consciousness resides gives me the ability to receive and disburse information to and from the world around me. I have information, therefore I know.

Was it not Rene Descartes who said, ‘I think, therefore I am’? Descartes declared that the only thing he could truly believe to exist was his own mind.  Whether he does or does not have a point is not something I can judge, which brings me to the issue of philosophy, faith and religion. I am indifferent and I take a neutral stand for just one simple reason. Among the many differing religions and branches of philosophy that are out there, there is not one with a premise I can put to a test.

I cannot know what mechanism will be the true one but I believe in the immortality of consciousness because of what I know about this universe. Matter, energy and information are known to prevail. 

I am aware, and I know it very well, about humanity's desire to live long for many more years than what their current lifetime is. 

Keep this in mind.  If you were born in 1800 and still living today you will have been around to see or hear about over two hundred wars, revolutions, coups, regional conflicts, not including epidemics, famine, in the 19th century alone (1800-1900).  The ebb of old empires and emergence of new ones were the main source of indiscriminate anguish that often outlasted a single human lifetime.  

You were alive during the next century and you will not only have been around for the two world wars but the Korean and Vietnam wars as well.  Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot were just a few names  but enough for you to rethink the whole idea of such a long life, isn't it?  You had seen natural disasters devastate wide swaths of land, displaced people of all ages who escaped death and lingering illness. By the middle of that century you were in constant fear of a nuclear war.  Later, you find out that there were even more to worry about - everything a threat to your very existence, depending on who has the pulpit of speech or control of what you read.

After the last two centuries would you still want to go on living?

Count it  your good fortune if you were to live between 75 to 100 years old.  That is enough to have experienced life, lived it to be remembered by those you've encountered. 

I've encountered thousands upon thousands of people and if I ever had felt like you, as every human is able to feel - sympathy, compassion, even love for another -  I must have lost it a very long time ago.  I am indifferent to anything, to any situation, or capable of any emotional response or passion to discover and enjoy what is new.  Do you still want to live forever?

That is ELB and that is his opinion.  Is he an extraterrestrial alien?  Is he what some would identify as an angel? Or, a devil?   He is not a philosophical or spiritual reflection of my own personal beliefs.  Let me remind the reader the heading of every musing:

"When you find yourself having to take a break from those that keep you on edge and stressed out, you can take the time to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber".

I will continue to believe in my Judeo Christian faith because that is how I was raised and I am satisfied with its moral teachings. ELB is in fact a composite of everyone who believes that one life in the scheme of the vastness and age of the universe may not be enough to be held accountable for a mere ten, twenty, ninety years of life, or for that matter the short lives of babies, young children, or of anyone not given the opportunity to learn from the teachings of one or another faith and belief system. I leave that to anyone who cares to ponder during their own idle moments.

Another year will commence soon but it is just another journey earth makes around the sun, one revolution, four seasons at a time. Anyone can hop on that journey at any time at one's birth and will hop off at a time of one's passing. That had gone on and will keep going on for what seems like forever but each of us gets one limited turn of some duration - some shorter or longer than others.

What is important is that first, we live life as best we can, within whatever "Life-clock" was meant for us, be good to other fellow human beings and, only secondly,  how others will judge how your life was lived.

When Nothing Is Everything and Everything is Nothing

“We come from nothing, we are going back to nothing. In the end what have we lost? Nothing!”

The above is a quote from a Monty Python comedic skit  which by the very nature of the show was meant to be funny, sarcastic, irreverent, yet, sometimes philosophically intriguing. 

With the Holiday Season upon us, the giving and the receiving have a way of making us reflect on so many things that make us ponder what it is like to have everything or, at least, for everything to go just right.  Do we have enough in our budget to get everything we've ever wanted to give to those close and dear to us in the spirit of giving.  On the other hand, some of us are really thinking, "Will I get everything that is on my wish list this year"?

Then there is a tiny, tiny fraction of the populace seeking what to give to someone who has everything.  That might seem like a no-brainer to anyone who is not tasked with that chore, but there are a handful, perhaps, who would spend time worrying what to give someone with everything.

What could Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, for example, ever want as a present on the 25th of this month?  Nothing, if what we are talking about is what money can buy.  However, Warren Buffet may want a newer home, newer than what he had owned and lived in over the last fifty years; maybe, a new car with a driver.  Perhaps, his own MacDonald's if he insists to dine on a burger often.  Each to his or her own.  But what is common to these folks is that the concept of having everything is far from what most people think.

Let's ponder the quote below:

“Two things define you: Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.”

― George Bernard Shaw 

Lest we forget, during the same season we are talking about, there is a bigger slice of the world's population - even in the neighborhood near us or from far away places in the third world where everything hinges on just a little something.  Anything just north of nothing is the closest these folks will ever get to something.  Everything may simply mean having three meals in a day .. sometimes.  

Let's read that quote again:

“We come from nothing, we are going back to nothing. In the end what have we lost? Nothing!”

 

Humor aside, some scientists take nothingness very seriously.  A few even make a career of studying nothingness – from the nature of the vacuum to the vast emptiness of space that actually makes up the majority of our universe.

Empty space or nothingness is what defines the entire landscape of the known universe. Is it true then that the desire to have everything and clearly to abhor what is nothing is far from what the universe is conveying to us?

Here comes the philosophical side of the Monty Python quote.  A slightly deeper dive but I promise to make it fun and worth the reader's while. I pledge to take us back to ground level - back to everything dear to us.

Matter – the stuff we can touch, see or smell – only makes up about 5% of the entire observable universe.  Yes, the couch you sit in, the car you drive, your dog, your cat, your town, county, the moon, the planets, stars and entire galaxies all make up only 5% of the universe.  Between here and the moon is a quarter of a million miles of empty space.  The astronauts who went to and from the moon encountered nothing, except perhaps a few grains of interstellar dust.  Between earth and the sun is 93 million miles and the distance between our sun to the nearest star had to be measured in light years to make the number manageable, i.e. 4.2 light years to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, if you were a light beam.  Light will have covered in a year 59,000,000,000,000 miles through nothingness or else we will not see the rest of what's out there.  

 

Our island galaxy, the Milky Way, is so large it will take light a hundred thousand years to cross it, yet it is an average size.  Our next door neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is much bigger and so far away that we see it today as it was a few million years ago –that’s how long it was for light to travel through nothing to get here.  But we’re about to meet up with it in a few billion years.  The two galaxies will merge as one after a high speed dance, like two ice skaters twirling and circling each other that will take millions of years to complete.  The several hundred billion stars between the two galaxies are so distant from one another that even during and after the two galaxies become one none of the stars will collide with one another. 

Nothingness seems to rule the cosmic real estate.  However, scientists, astrophysicists and anyone who cares to think about these things are not happy with the 5% idea.  It does not explain the structure of the universe.  There is not enough in 5% to hold together galaxies and clusters of galaxies (don’t you know there are superclusters of galaxies?) that everything should have all flown away a long time ago like fine dust on a windy day.  They don’t because something mysterious is holding everything together - an invisible glue.

Now scientists have the answer and they seem pretty adamant about it that they have come up with the numbers that total 100%.  First, there is 5%.  Then there is 27% that is made up of dark matter, and 68% dark energy.  You can’t get any more exotic than this, I’m not trying to make this sound like differentiating between dark and regular chocolate but it is, as of today, a mathematically viable theory.  

Dark matter  supposedly holds together the shape of and the clustering of galaxies while dark energy is what is causing the universe to continue to expand and doing it at a higher rate than previously theorized.  Mathematical viability notwithstanding, there is no solid proof of the existence of dark matter or dark energy.  Proponents of the theory just “knows” they exist but they can’t even describe what either looks like or what exactly they are.  We’re back to 5% that’s real and the rest theoretical at best, imaginary even if one suspends a little bit of his or her disbelief.

Let’s turn to  human scale and anything smaller.  Between us folks we demand and create a lot of space from each other.  Take the average home.  We fill it with a lot of stuff – just look around you – and even when we include ourselves, the dog and the cat and the aquarium at the corner, there is more space than stuff.  We like the high vaulted ceiling, the second floor bedrooms that nobody goes up to, and if you add the attic, there’s more space still.  

There is a reason for bringing this up because when we look at the very small, the amount of empty space is even more staggeringly lopsided against actual physical matter.

Take the stable building block of everything - the atom.  It has a nucleus and electron(s) circling it.  Scale up the atom to the size of an average covered football stadium.  Make the nucleus the size of a  basketball at  centerfield and you’ll have an electron the size of a grape circling above at roof level.  In between that basketball and the grape is empty space.  We’re made of atoms and if within each atom is mostly empty space we could then very well be made more of nothing than something. 

Now we see that whether in cosmological or human scale, space, the void, or nothingness pre-dominates.  It might be facetious to take this position but it is a metaphor for much of everything around us. 

If you believe in the Creator you accept that we were created from nothing and that we will ultimately go back to nothing, “from dust to dust…”  If you are not a believer then you have some explaining to do as to where everything came from.  Even if you embrace the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe you’d still have to look beyond what was there before it.  Was there nothing before it?  Then there is the question of what is really beyond the so-called horizon of the universe – what lies beyond the very edge.  If we say that there is nothing beyond the horizon then we will have to admit that the nothingness that is out there has to be infinitely far larger than all of everything in the universe combined. 

No matter which side of the debate you are in, nothing is everything and everything is nothing.

The expression, "You can't take it with you", is exactly about ending with nothing, dust to dust.  In other words, everything we seem to obsess with, worry about, keep us up at night, many nights, before the 24th this month, are all  in the interim,  which is what defines each of our individual lives. An interim of time spent amassing, collecting and obsessing about stuff, which in the universal scale that interim we call life is about less than one nanosecond. 

Therefore, the next time you order a burger, or a pizza at the mall while shopping, say  that you want everything in it.  And think nothing of dessert later.  

However, keep in mind that the weight you may gain this Holiday season is a dream of roughly more than three quarters of the world's population.  Gaining weight is really just a first world thing, where   weight loss programs, exercise machines, appetite suppressants, surgeries even, etc. are a multi-billion dollar business.  

On the other hand, weight gain is a mother's constant wish for her child or children in the interior of the Amazon rainforest, the plains of the Kalahari, the poorest sections of Bangladesh, and we can go on and on.  

For this season, therefore, let us think nothing of getting everything.

I must end with this quote to cure all our fears during the Holidays:

“The bad news is nothing lasts forever,

The good news is nothing lasts forever.”

― J. Cole

Think for just a bit because that quote may answer everything you've always feared about having nothing. 

 

Moments 2.023

We all have them. And when we allude it in this manner, "He has his moments", or "She has hers", we can mean it to go either way through the corridors of  praise or annoyance.

But there is no getting around it, our memories are made up of moments. Everyone's entire life is made up of slices of space and time, each slice a moment.

We can be thankful for our moments. Though sometimes we prefer not to have them. Our animal friends only have a handful: fight or flight, not too hungry, fully sated or craving, cold to a shiver or hot to seek shade and shelter, desire to mate or to flee with and to protect the young.  None too complicated. None too complex.

We, on the other hand, have a plethora of countless moments.  Few so simple, all others so complicated. Most don't come to us singly, some a concoction of many.  All at the same time. What do we make of this and what ought we to do?

Over time at particular points in our lives we've learned a thing or two about what moments to remember, what to discard, what many others we'd soon forget with dispatch at the time they happened. So many different moments we can set aside, except perhaps for the two I choose. Moments of sadness and those of joy, or happiness. All others, I think, are between those two, in many flavors or degrees of glee or distress. 

Moments of darkness lead us to seek and appreciate light. As soon as we perceive the coming of dawn, the graying of a once pitch black horizon, hope is awakened, buoyed in anticipation of a pale orange sky, followed by bright yellow - the inevitability of another morning.

Many of us, all 99.999 %, do not have our lives turn to spectacularly high levels that nerd multi-billionaires had become because of countless sad moments in their lives that they turned around to overcome what they lacked, to focus on the best they were capable to do; but we had our own share of sad moments that were inspirational, if not the impetus, for what we've become. Or, what inspired us to rise up rather than be down on ourselves.  

Think back on all the moments that you remember.  The happy ones were good and wonderful, yes! Good moments are what makes us to want more, better than what we've had so far. Sad moments make us more thoughtful of a loved one lost, perhaps, or a friend or co-worker down on his or her luck.  

Sad moments at a setback or failure hit us hard but because one believes that it is not the fall but how one gets back up that is a lot more significant than a quick high-five over one success. More successes were had by those who viewed their failures with sadness at first. Then they turned it around to propel themselves to overcome. Soon they realized how much more capable they were of achieving far and above the ones they failed at in the beginning.

Sad moments.  Those I remember well. It was our first December in this country. We had just moved to Houston the previous month of November, having left New York and the family of my wife's sister and their parents, to start my job here.  We had no car - I took the bus to and from work - because I didn't have enough credit history to get a car loan and no credit card company would approve my application to have one. We were new immigrants.  

All the happy moments of getting our Green Card to come here just months earlier, the flight, the awe of New York, were all forgotten then.  We did not know anyone in the huge city and we had no friends, no relatives nearby.  On Christmas Eve.  I rented a car for the two days on the eve of and on Christmas Day.  We went to the mall but all we did was sit and watch all the happy people around us.  We didn't shop. We couldn't. There was not enough money.  It was the saddest Christmas except that our entire family of four were together.

My wife had second thoughts about emigrating, almost regretting the whole idea, because it was she who wanted to venture out of the secured and predictable life. It was her original application to the U.S. Embassy.  I resisted at first because we were happy and comfortable in our homeland. Why move when we had everything going so well, already seven years into a career I liked; with two young children ages five and six? I asked.  

In the midst of those sad moments when even my wife was distressed by our situation, I reassured her that not only were we going to stay, we were going to make it and we will do well.  I did not base it on any concrete guarantee or reassurance but  knew we had  to do the best we could and I had to work the hardest like I've never had before so no other Christmas like that ever happened again. Those sad moments made me discard every negative thought and held onto everything that was right about our decision to come here.  I held on to every word the Vice Consul said at the U.S. Embassy in Manila when we were interviewed early that year. He said we were a family America would welcome and he knew we would do well. If he had faith in us then I saw no reason why we couldn't believe that ourselves.  Those sad moments on that December night did matter a lot more than any happy ones before and even later. Every sad moment then and later had purpose.

Fast forward to today from that December forty three years ago, I am happy to say that  not only did we do all right we've achieved many-times-fold whatever were our expectations  of the decision we made to come and settle here. So, even now that we are so blessed and happily living the dream, it was the saddest moments I often remember, to remind me of the fortunes we've had that countless others somewhere out there at this very moment are dreaming and seeking to have.

Remember that looking back at the last year of 2023 about to close and looking into the New Year of 2024, think not so much of just the happy days. The sad moments that come to visit with us will leave lasting memories, whether we like them or not, so we might as well make use of them because like carbon atoms that nobody wants to have are what are added to iron to make steel. 

There are no sadder moments than a diagnosis we never anticipated could happen to us or a loved one; a relationship about to unravel; unforeseen major expenses; even fears we daily feel beyond our control, and so many others we'd rather they do not become moments added to our life's story.

When my wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's last year, it was naturally devastating for both of us. But I sought to peek behind the curtain of sadness and despair and saw many brighter moments. I did not know until then the untold capacities of love; I just realized what it is like to really care for someone.  I did not know, for example, that doing the groceries, cooking, and even loading the dishwasher the way she prefers, and loading and emptying the clothes dryer (she still prefers to load the clothes washer herself), are chores I will do routinely and willingly with nary a moment to ask why. 

I tell my wife that we do not question why  Parkinson's came upon her. Instead we need to answer the question: Are we both capable of dealing with it, recognizing we've had the strength all along to sail  half way from the other side of the world to begin a new life and do well. We had the benefit of having lived one life in one world, only to begin again in another - a new world with far more opportunities and advances in medical care and nutrition.  These thoughts alone are enough to keep the torch of hope lit up with a steady flame to ward off the darkness.  

We do not know to what depths our love and care will go toward another until we go down to as low as we can to measure it.  It is by measuring to see what we are capable of which will soon make us realize we can do it.

“THERE ARE MOMENTS WHEN I WISH I COULD ROLL BACK THE CLOCK AND TAKE ALL THE SADNESS AWAY, BUT I HAVE THE 

FEELING THAT IF I DID, THE JOY WOULD BE GONE AS WELL.” 

--NICHOLAS SPARKS

Exactly, because we will only know and recognize what joy is, once we've familiarized ourselves with what sadness looks like. 

With the coming Holidays about to unfurl, let us believe  only in days of good tidings, and let us not focus on worrying about what unwanted moments will intrude, for we've had enough of those already, at this point in our lives, to have inoculated us with an impenetrable shield.

Enjoy the Holidays! Be safe and care for those close to you.