by Jessica Wang 

Living forever might not be as 

great as it sounds…

Death is unfair, and you could die at any given point. Although you’d be dead, life would still go on. When death arrives at your doorstep it signals life is over. As sad as it could be, the end of one existence makes room for another person’s existence because the Earth only has enough resources to sustain so many living beings at once. A dead body could provide nutrition for the living to continue, as some cultures do. It’s like the passing of batons. 

According to science, there is no evidence of an afterlife. But what if you had the chance to be immortal—would you rather die like everyone else or live an infinite amount of years instead?

To start, let’s analyze why humans are scared of dying. People fear death even though they have never felt how it might feel. If they had, they would not be alive to tell the tale. It is natural for humans to fear the unknown. What would it be like to not be conscious? To be alone in an empty vacuum? To have an out-of-body experience? To feel like a void? To be nonexistent?

It could also be the pain of death, like getting stabbed or having a heart attack that makes people not want to die. But the good news is that today more and more people do not have to experience a torturous and inhuman death. In medieval times people had painful ways to die as a punishment for doing something wrong. 

Living forever is an alternative to experiencing the pain and weakness of death.  Being immortal would mean you could not die even if you wanted to. Even when you get bored with everything that life can offer, you would still have to endure being alive until the day the universe ends. Because of this, living forever could be tiring, especially if everyone you care about is gone since a loved one dying is a sad reality to endure. At first, infinity might seem like a good idea, however, there is a questionable weirdness about being alive forever because everything that we see in our world has a beginning and an end. Trees can only grow so tall, a day may feel endless but will only last so long, and there are only so many different animals to see and places to go. 

Infinity is only a concept that we are only aware of through reading books, which depict it as an endless line leading to a dark hole. But then again, death makes your life and time feel limited. So, to ask the question again: would you rather die like everyone else or live an infinite amount of years?

About Jessica Wang

Jessica Wang is a first year business student at Bradley University. Born in New York and currently living in Peoria, she is a lover of making impactful storytelling, drawing, exploring Peoria, playing piano, and eating sushi. She has participated in activities like freshflim and has over 200 hours of volunteer work.