A Lovely Hypothetical

I'm going to attempt to prove something that is obvious. Hopefully the realizations that I am trying to lead you to have the same striking effect on you as they have had on me.

To begin, here is a brief caveat, which bolsters the point I'm trying to make by unfairly casting aside the criticisms of one who might not get it. You might not get it. You might be one of those ambitious folks, who believes in the power of materials, the power of greed and the power of power, in the superiority of quantity over quality. Such a materialistic view of experience, a worldview that dictates that a vast collection of mediocre memories is superior to a indulgence in a select, prime and dearly-held memories, is not necessarily wrong. I would deeply disagree with it, maybe even discourage it and blame such a worldview and its relatives for the many problems human bees have created in the world today.

So the proposition is this. You have a choice to make, a choice between immortality and love. If you choose immortality you will be immortal, in a way. You will never die. You won't die of natural causes and you won't die of any injury you suffer. You can choose to live as whatever age you desire, from infancy to senility, if you choose. In this scenario you could theoretically live until the end of the universe, beyond the extinction of human beings, beyond the destruction of the sun and beyond the point in time when the earth becomes unlivable for all living things.

You can die, if you want to. This is not true immortality. You can commit suicide, or if the ritual does not suit you, you could just will yourself to death. As long as you want death, it will come to you. As long as you want life, you will live forever.

The catch to this scenario is that your life will be dull. You would not be capable of really feeling any extreme or worthwhile emotion. It wouldn't exactly be shades of grey, but the colors would certainly be some faded, pastel shadow of what they could be. There'd be laughter and enjoyment, distress and anger. You'd still be able to taste and enjoy or dislike food. But nothing will taste as good or as bad as it should. Additionally, no person will be able to stir any emotion in you at all. Human beings become fleshy companions, incapable of intellectually, physically, emotionally or sexually satisfying you. But you pretty much immortal.

The other choice is simple. Start by imagining the perfect person, the most attractive and alluring person you can possibly imagine. Now picture spending the perfect day with that person. Imagine the feeling that comes with that experience, the knowledge that nothing can be any better than the moments, no feeling more enjoyable and no love more fulfilling that this set of 24 consecutive hours.

You can do anything with anyone. You can have a 24 hour sex session with Beyonce (or Ryan Gosling etc.) or spend a day discussing scientific theories with Albert Einstein or Madame Curie etc) or have a 24 hour long physics conversation while having sex with a person who has Beyonce's looks and Albert Einstein's intelligence. Whatever you and up doing and with whomever you end up doing it, there are two guarantees. The first is that's during this day, you will be the happiest you ever have been or could be. The second is that, when you look at that person, whatever sexy Frankenstein's monster you concoct, your heart will become unhealthily bloated with love and adoration.

Actually, there's a third guarantee. At the end of the day, you drop dead.

I assume that, despite the dropping dead part, most people would go with the second option without much thought. Everyone to whom I have posed this scenario did.

So let's make it a little less appealing. What if the duration that that perfect experience is only twelve hours? What if it's only one? What if its half and hour or even just a minute or two?

What if this happens. You walk down a busy street and see the most beautiful person you ever laid eyes on. (S)he looks up at just the right moment and the two of you lock eyes. In just that half second of mutual gazing, you feel more love than you've ever felt, than you ever thought you could feel. Inexplicably, you feel happier than can be imagined and you start laughing and crying and jumping up and down and waving your hands. That's how joyous you are in this fifth of a second. You feel like a full pint of beer, so filled over that the foamy head starts bubbling down the sides of the glass.

Then, after exactly one second full of this feeling passes, you collapse to the sidewalk, dead.

What would you give up for even just a second of that feeling?