If you had the choice to live to age 200, would you take up that blind offer? My beloved wife Janna would not. She’s perfectly content with her life and, if she died today, she would feel satisfied with the accomplishments of her life. I, on the other hand, would love to live to age 200 if, of course, there were no sort of Twilight Zone curse involved where I was confined to a bed in a coma for 125 years, or I became a pack mule in the Himalayas for a century, or if I had to live in an active sewer and never see the light of day for 110 years.
Of course, offers to live an infinity life are always initially made conditionless so you’d have to guess if you body could really sustain all those years, or if you’d have to be frozen and then unthawed later so modern medical science could resurrect you and then fix, via a DNA manipulation, what was killing you in the first place.
Would you want to live 200 years? Or would you prefer to do your under-100 and then be done with it all?
Our 200 Year conversation led me to ask Janna if she would like to know the exact day, month and year of her death — and without hesitation she said “Yes!” She felt knowing the exact moment of her end would help her say good-bye and wrap up any undone circles and have everything in order.
I, of course, had a more worrisome thought — that was probably still influenced by my Twilight Zone paranoia — and how knowing the exact date I would die could mean that I might live in a disaffected communicative state for 175 years waiting for the absolute end, and my life would become an unwilling, and unwitting, purgatory with no escape until said date arrived to take me away.
I can see value in knowing the moment of your ultimate end — but would I want to know the how and why I died on a certain date? I suppose wanting to know would depend upon the severity of the end. If I were to die quietly in bed, okay then. If I were to die in a vicious car fire, probably not. I know I am not answering the question…
What’s your take on this? Do you want to live 200 years?
Do you want to know the exact date of your death?
Is knowing the cause of your death important or not?