The Quest for Immortality
Another article that was written a while back needed updating and reformatting for easier reading.
I am minded now more and more about mortality as I see more of my family members and public figures from my younger days pass away, especially since my mother passed away a few months ago.
She was the last of her generation in my family to go of those who grew up during the depression and subsequent years of WWII, the Korean War, the 60s, and beyond. She lived to 93 so was a witness to a lot of changes in the US during her lifetime.
Now that I am watching my grandchildren grow up, I am more thoughtful of how far I have come in my life and all of the places I have been, and things I have done so far. I have had a full, rich life. Full of adventures around the world and here at home.
I still have more things I want to do before the eternal darkness comes for me but they are more sedentary at my age. My wife and I want to travel more to see a few things before we are too old to travel anymore and I want to read and write more as I settle down in the winter of my life.
Mostly, I sit in thought a lot more than I used to, remembering the past. I remember when I used to visit with my mother when she still lived in her little house on the edge of town and I lived a few short miles away. I remember the old farm when my father was still alive many, many years ago. I remember the people I have loved and lost and the ones I still have for now. And most of all, I remember a lot of the misadventures of my younger days traveling around the world and serving my country in the military.
I am semi-retired now and look forward to reading the books I have on the bookshelf, writing more articles and poetry, travel with my wife as we can afford to but I worry if I will run out of things to do. That worries me more than anything because I feel that If I don’t have enough things to do, I will waste away. That scares me more than anything right now.
I seem to be spending more time in and out of doctor’s offices than I remember for things age-related and I am sure there will be more of that to come. When the government told me a year ago that I had to sign up for Medicare, whether I wanted to or not, it was a rude awakening that I am now classified as a senior citizen even though I don’t feel like it.
So now I contemplate the future, or what’s left of it, and wonder what the world will be like in the next 20 or 25 years. I figure that is about all I have left in this middle earth if I am lucky to keep my health that long.
Given all of the things I have been through and exposed to (chemicals, toxic medicines, and bad food/water), I may have to fight to make it that far. I just have to keep fighting with the doctors who don’t understand the things my body and mind were exposed to in my younger days.
That’s another thing I have trouble with, institutionalized medicine. Doctors do not know how to practice real medicine anymore. If your symptoms are not in the big book of recognized medical diagnoses, they throw something at you from the book to see if it sticks. When it doesn’t, they throw something else at you until something sticks or they give up.
I have been the victim of that for many years. I gave up finally and just live with the symptoms as being incurable and hoped that whatever is causing the symptoms doesn’t kill me off too early.
But that all points back to this need to live as long as possible, forever for some, if they could. The majority of western civilizations want to live infinite lives in some fashion or another. The religions and spiritual beliefs all point to an afterlife of some sort and this dates back to the Neanderthals, who the paleontologists discovered years ago, practiced a crude burial ritual involving burying the dead in a shallow grave and placing intimate objects with the bodies.
The idea of our loved one’s bodies ceasing to function anymore because their bodies wore out is more than some people can bear. What sets humans apart from the other species on this planet is our long-term memories. Because of that, some of us can’t let go of our closest relationships, whether it be family members or very close friends. Our grief over the loss of these people can sometimes overwhelm us. Most can but need some type of ritual so that they feel like this person will live on forever even when the physical body is gone.
What we don’t want to admit is that in the larger scheme of the planet’s ecosystem, everything has a life expectancy. Everything from the organic organisms to the rocks that make up the bones of the planet. All things die eventually. The cellular composition breaks down over time, some shorter than others, due to the radiation from our sun that leaks into our atmosphere every day.
This radiation mutates our cells and eventually kills them and once enough cells fail to regenerate faster than they die off, the organism that the cells make up fails to operate anymore. Machines are something we are familiar with in our daily lives. We see our machines fail due to parts wearing out every day. Our organic bodies do the same thing. As we age, parts wear out and when enough parts wear out, the organic machine fails to work anymore.
All things die (cease to function). The rocks erode away over very long life cycles but eventually, they turn to dust. Some animals have longer life cycles than others, some other organisms live longer than others, (trees for example). Others have very short life cycles like certain insects who only live for days at a time. As humans with long memories, we will likely never evolve past ritualizing the failure of the bodies of our loved ones because we lack the ability to forget them.
So, to bring things closer to home, I contemplate these things as the cells in my body start to fail due to age and I can now imagine approximately when they will fail altogether. I know that the humans closest to me in relationships will ritualize me in some fashion when my cells fail beyond their ability to function anymore because that is now a part of our collective DNA.
Do I wish this, no, but as my body (and brain) will have ceased to operate anymore, I will be beyond any ability to say no? I can’t control what others will do, especially after I have died. All we can do is prepare for that eventuality. Accept the fact that we all have an expiration time. I try not to think about it too much but yet I do more now when I can see the end coming.
I feel like I have so many more things I want to do and I am anxious that I won’t be able to finish them before I expire. So for me, I am taking this time I have left to manage the things I wish to accomplish and try to complete them before my cellular structure fails and prevents me from completing those tasks. I am also mindful to not take on any more long-term goals anymore as I likely won’t remain functional long enough to see them completed.
I don’t think of the word death. I think of my mortality as just another part of the eco-life cycle all things on this planet go through. We don’t like to admit it but we are a part of the ecosystem on this planet. We don’t want to be, which is probably why we are causing so much damage to the ecosystem now. We want to live forever and live our selfish lives, only looking ahead to see what’s in it for ourselves.
We as a species have the strongest survival instinct of any other on the planet. It is that survival instinct that is creating all of the climate issues and other socio-economic issues prevalent in the world today. We kill each other off by the thousands at times due to these issues and are willing to sacrifice our lives because of this super strong will to survive no matter what.
Think about all of the mass human migrations taking place across the planet now. The majority of this is caused by this survival instinct. They can no longer live where they were due to climate change and the socio-economic issues that have caused so they migrate to better climate conditions but the inhabitants are also in survival mode and are pushing back hard.
This has been going on since the first ancestors of homo sapiens started to grow in numbers and migrated towards better survival conditions (better access to food and shelter). As long as our species continues to operate on this overwhelming urge to survive, we will have constant strife over the lack of resources that enable us to survive.
All of that adds to the overall mortality question. If we are fortunate to live a long life (long for our species anyway), we should plan for our eventual expiration time. So many humans on this planet don’t get that opportunity as their cellular structure suffers so much damage from projectiles, disease, and lack of resources to feed those cells that they expire very early in life.
We should be very thankful for the lives we have lived if we are fortunate enough to expire due to age-related cell failure rather than a sudden violent end or a slow-wasting failure. Don’t get all wrapped up in trying to live forever or making such a splash in the social world we live in to ensure no one forgets us (another form of immortality). Survive as best as you can with few regrets and create a task list that is manageable to complete before we reach our eventual expiration date.
