Mortality is God’s Greatest Gift

If have learned nothing from books and movies about immortality, it’s that you don’t want it. Not for the obvious reasons, but for one simple one: the older you get, you realize it’s the same s#*$, different decade.

Have you ever noticed that most immortal stories make sure they conveniently never have children? This is not by accident. Otherwise, you have to explain to your grandkids why you still look twenty-something. The answer is make-up (thank you, Lazarus Long), but eventually your kids go away, and as I’ve seen recently, most great-grandkids don’t wanna hang out with their elderly relatives. This can be terribly, terribly depressing.

They did reference this in one of the later Anne Rice novels, where one of the vampires had kids before she was turned, and then followed her kids’ lives in exhaustive genealogies. Supposedly it kept her sane all those centuries.

“All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.”

Starting with the Battlestar Galactica reference, it doesn’t take much for me to look at previous presidential campaigns and see, “Oh yeah, they’re still proclaiming the same crap they did the last two election cycles. Why do we think they’ll actually do it this time?!” Never believe that this is the most important election of our lifetime because it’s not. How do I know? They said that in every election I’ve ever seen.

Only if you’re young can you get excited enough to think this is the change we’re waiting for or we can make America great.

Santayana predates Churchill saying it by several decades. What I’m always amazed by is how we often learn the wrong lesson from history. For example, we were convinced that the Soviet Union and its allies were out to conquer the world, and that if we did appeasement like Chamberlain did back in 1935, then we’d have World War III. We failed to take locals desires for independence into account, so what was a desire for self-recognition by the Viet Minh was turned into a fight against communism… so we get the Vietnam war.

We so often get it wrong. For example, the original V for Vendetta comic book was a complaint against the excesses of the Thatcher administration in Great Britain. Think about that – they were saying Margaret Thatcher was the new Hitler. 40 years ago. Think how wrong that was. Thatcher was Thatcher, Trump is Trump, Biden is Biden. It’s important as citizens to criticize our government, to fight against policies which we oppose, but recognize them for what they are. Not angels or demons, just men.

This is why I do not fear death. Not by COVID, or the Sweet Meteor of Death, or by getting run over in the street. I don’t embrace it–don’t get me wrong–but there are far worse things than death. Like seeing the next generation think they’re going to change the world and actually screwing up the few things I enjoyed.

But I could just be getting cranky as I get older. Am I off track here? Let me know in the comments section below!