Immortality

Immortality

By Frederick J. Blahnik

                 He dreamed of immortality and longed unceasingly for it.  Pined for it.  Worshipped the very concept.  He thought immortality was without question the greatest gift that could be bestowed upon anyone.  After all, who in their right mind doesn’t want to live forever and experience the majesty of life, as well as all the trappings of human consciousness, for perpetuity and beyond?

A life without end…...

Doesn’t the thought of that sound absolutely idyllic to you, the reader?  Limitless time to accomplish everything you’ve always wanted to do–to chase after your most esoteric dreams, to embrace and savor happiness, to exalt in the infinite possibilities earthly life has to offer…..

And yet–when said miracle happened and immortality was finally granted onto him, well……it wasn’t even a tad similar to the nirvana he had envisioned in his mind.  In fact, true immortality came nowhere close to embodying the great things he had dreamt about all those years prior.  Because now those nearly infinite possibilities for generating pleasure he had fantasized about earlier were matched up against a bona fide infinite number of days in which to experience them…..and when he woke up the morning after the last fantasy was experienced for the first time and the act subsequently became as routine and mundane to him as brushing his teeth….…and he next began looking for something new and exciting and totally unique to do in the days and weeks and years which lay before him….…

                I think you understand the picture I’m trying to draw here…..

                At THAT critical juncture, my friend…..what truly is there left to live for???

The lesson he ultimately discovered should have been pretty obvious right from the outset.  With immortality ultimately comes…..boredom.  Yes, that’s right—absolute, certified, unadulterated boredom!   Inasmuch as after you have gone ahead and done everything you always dreamed of doing and exhausted every one of your hedonistic desires, you are then left with an infinite amount of time on your hands with nothing new or exciting left to experiment with for the remainder of days–Correct that!….I should have instead stated the never-ending stream of days–which cascade relentlessly atop one another like ocean waves on a lonely secluded beach.

The inevitable result of all this?

Boredom.  Chronic boredom.  Inconsolable boredom.  Which only grows worse and more tedious and more insidious with each passing day and year.  Because even the world’s most egregious hedonist has a limited appetite for pleasure in the really, REALLY long run, like, say—–eternity and beyond.….…

No, our dissatisfied friend longed for immortality.  Begged for it.  Deified it.  Like virtually everyone else who has ever walked the face of this earth, he thought it was the greatest gift that could be bestowed upon anyone.  Too late, he discovered he was wrong.

Dreadfully wrong…..

And now the man with the guaranteed future–the guy who by all rights should be the happiest person in all the world–is quite paradoxically the most bored individual on this entire planet, someone who–Would you believe it?!?!–strongly envies those mere mortals with shortened lifespans who scurry about hither and yon entertaining themselves not unlike hyperactive ants, content in the knowledge they’ll run out of time and money and quite possibly suitable companionship long before they run out of options for happiness.

So think about our common friend–our eternally “lucky” friend, if you will–the next time you get a free second in your perpetually harried life and find yourself fantasizing about time without end and how wonderful that would be and how there’s really no limit for interesting things to experience and, oh, above all else……always be careful what you wish for, because miracles do happen on occasion and you should therefore unfailingly prepare for the unexpected……