*waves hand in the air* I’ll take your place Monica! I will gladly face centuries upon centuries so that you may live a normal human life. I will accept all my chronic illnesses (I have a few) for eternity, in exchange for being an immortal immature twenty-year-old forever. *has a huge fear of death and responsibility as well as a MAJOR Peter Pan Complex*
I liked that book! Never read Tuck Everlasting, though.
Highlander also deals with the downside of immortality, you know besides the “I want your head”, and “There can be only one” part.
I have. Several times. Always for school. I hate that damn book. Winnie’s an idiot… well, maybe not. I mean, she’s a bit young. But if I was her, I would have saved the water and waited a few years and then YAY NEVER GROW UP
That book and the original movie made me cry my eyes out. Being ageless or immortal(ageless beings can be killed, immortals cannot) would add to loneliness. Outliving everyone and everything you knew, watching civilizations rise and fall like the tides. Plus, define forever? Because if that means I’ll still be on Earth when the sun turns into a red giant, I’ll pass.
I dunno; sounds like someone’s idea of a living hell to me…death is what gives life urgency. To get as much out of life as possible before the Grim Reaper gives you the gong. That’s the TRUE meaning of life…to live it.
I dunno. I kinda agree with what Adam Young said at the end of Good Omens. That we should all live a long long time, like Methusela, that way, we’d actually care about the earth because we’d still BE here in a hundred years.
to answer Raye: the reason the immortality stories suck is cuz the characters are always ALONE. Bottom line: Immortality alone is the worst curse of all. Immortality with your true love, identical to heaven. really, thats waht heaven is.\, “I Go to join my dearly departed wife in heaven until the end of eternity!”….. yeah doesnt sound so diff. theres a fic i read about the Sonic universe, Shadow (who is immortal) gets a girlfreind who is too, and LONG after everyone else we know of is long dead, and the world order is falling into total war, at least they are still together. makes you think huh.
I could think of a couple other reasons immortality is a curse:
Eventual boredom, since even an active intellect and curiousity will eventually exhaust all human-capacity knowledge. Even if each field of knowledge took, say, 10,000 years to suss (or whatever number), after a dozen, or 10,000 periods, you’d run out of stuff to study. And STILL have an unending eternity to face.
Likewise, the capacity of the human mind seems finite. What happens when the memory banks are full? Does life become a succession of days in which change is no longer possible? Are some memories overwritten or lost?
As written by Drake in the movie Blade: Trinity, “Eternity will come to such as are fit for it.”
Really though, how many mortals are really fit for it if they don’t know how to prepare for it?
I know too much mythology to ever want to go the routes of either never growing old or being immortal. Note they don’t always go hand in hand and even if you never get old or can’t die, imagine being sick, paralyzed, having amnesia, or a painful form of cancer.
*waves hand in the air* I’ll take your place Monica! I will gladly face centuries upon centuries so that you may live a normal human life. I will accept all my chronic illnesses (I have a few) for eternity, in exchange for being an immortal immature twenty-year-old forever. *has a huge fear of death and responsibility as well as a MAJOR Peter Pan Complex*
Go read Tuck Everlasting, Raye.
Or Chalker’s Midnight at the Well of Souls.
I liked that book! Never read Tuck Everlasting, though.
Highlander also deals with the downside of immortality, you know besides the “I want your head”, and “There can be only one” part.
I have. Several times. Always for school. I hate that damn book. Winnie’s an idiot… well, maybe not. I mean, she’s a bit young. But if I was her, I would have saved the water and waited a few years and then YAY NEVER GROW UP
That book and the original movie made me cry my eyes out. Being ageless or immortal(ageless beings can be killed, immortals cannot) would add to loneliness. Outliving everyone and everything you knew, watching civilizations rise and fall like the tides. Plus, define forever? Because if that means I’ll still be on Earth when the sun turns into a red giant, I’ll pass.
I dunno; sounds like someone’s idea of a living hell to me…death is what gives life urgency. To get as much out of life as possible before the Grim Reaper gives you the gong. That’s the TRUE meaning of life…to live it.
I dunno. I kinda agree with what Adam Young said at the end of Good Omens. That we should all live a long long time, like Methusela, that way, we’d actually care about the earth because we’d still BE here in a hundred years.
to answer Raye: the reason the immortality stories suck is cuz the characters are always ALONE. Bottom line: Immortality alone is the worst curse of all. Immortality with your true love, identical to heaven. really, thats waht heaven is.\, “I Go to join my dearly departed wife in heaven until the end of eternity!”….. yeah doesnt sound so diff. theres a fic i read about the Sonic universe, Shadow (who is immortal) gets a girlfreind who is too, and LONG after everyone else we know of is long dead, and the world order is falling into total war, at least they are still together. makes you think huh.
I could think of a couple other reasons immortality is a curse:
Eventual boredom, since even an active intellect and curiousity will eventually exhaust all human-capacity knowledge. Even if each field of knowledge took, say, 10,000 years to suss (or whatever number), after a dozen, or 10,000 periods, you’d run out of stuff to study. And STILL have an unending eternity to face.
Likewise, the capacity of the human mind seems finite. What happens when the memory banks are full? Does life become a succession of days in which change is no longer possible? Are some memories overwritten or lost?
As written by Drake in the movie Blade: Trinity, “Eternity will come to such as are fit for it.”
Really though, how many mortals are really fit for it if they don’t know how to prepare for it?
On the plus side, Monica will eventually become the best friggin’ archeological researcher <iever!
I know too much mythology to ever want to go the routes of either never growing old or being immortal. Note they don’t always go hand in hand and even if you never get old or can’t die, imagine being sick, paralyzed, having amnesia, or a painful form of cancer.