Immortality hurts

Some cultures treat immortality as a metaphysical ability to cheat corporeal death. Others as the ability to transcend your own time through the memory of the next generations. What both sides will eventually agree is that immortality is earned, and it hurts. It always does.

It takes sacrifice. Hard work. Beating temptation and hardship. Accomplishing what mere luck won’t do. Through pain, unbearable regret or inhuman sweat, it will hurt. Christians believe a life of good deeds and repent for all sins will open access to an immortal after life. The Yorubas, from West Africa, told their Brazilian ancestors that if one’s deeds need to be remembered for seven generations, their spirit becomes immortal. Daoists in China believe that the evolution of the spirit in life can reach levels so integrated to the energy of the universe, a person will not die.

In all accounts, immortality is an exclusive reward for the few who are willing to work harder than all in this little job we have on Earth.

At least until the day that a legend among all legends makes immortality available for all. Futurists like Ray Kurtsweil seem to believe we will reach that point at 2045.

At which point our masochistic species will likely try to find something painful to achieve again. Maybe death.