I know OP meant well, but I hated this. I hate the beads. I hate the jars. I hate the thinking behind all of this.
For the record, I'm almost as old as OP and this is all the opposite of how I think. I cherish every day. I can't wait to get to work. And to play. And to eat good food, drink good beer, and hang out with good friends and family. Yesterday, I jogged through the woods, emailed 15 friends, had cake and ice cream with my mother, hung out on hacker news, and wrote some really cool code. Today will probably be even better.
Moving a bead from one jar to the other is not only depressing, it's sick. Throw out those jars, OP, and get on doing what you love.
I don't care how old I am or how old anyone else is. I don't even want to think about my death, I just want to keep on living my life.
I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather did, not screaming and yelling like everyone else in the car.
I don't even want to think about my death, I just want to keep on living my life.
Aging is ridiculously unfair, but ignoring it doesn't stop it from happening. The Reaper keeps track of the beads whether or not you do. People get old. Their bodies and minds slowly break down. At some point they have to stop working, stop driving, stop doing lots of things they love doing.
This accounting of days sounds depressing at first, but I can speak from experience: you soon go back to your normal level of happiness, but with a more accurate view of reality. I think a similar thing happens with terminally ill patients, although the time scale is shorter.
The terminal illness analogy maps pretty well to aging. So much so that I encourage people to donate to anti-aging research such as the Methuselah Foundation (https://www.mfoundation.org/?pn=mj_donate) or SENS (http://www.sens.org/donate). I just donated $50 the latter.
It's likely that many people who are alive today will be around to take advantage of future anti-aging treatments. So if you're young enough, you win the birth lottery. Hooray, indefinite life span is yours. Otherwise, you wither and die.
I look at it this way: the near-eternity that occurred before my birth didn't bother me. So I won't be bothered by the eternity that occurs after my death. I won't be around to contemplate it.
You can take this line of thinking to either of its natural conclusions: the morbid one or the "seize the day" one. I'm somewhere in the middle. I try to seize the day, but I'm a realist.
Some days I grab life by the nuts. Some days I count the beads.
I won't be bothered by the eternity that occurs after my death.
Would you mind if you died tomorrow? What about in a year? 10 years? 100? 1,000? If you had a choice in the matter, would you ever want to age and die? Would you condemn others to the same fate?
I want to be alive tomorrow. Tomorrow I will want to be alive the next day. And so on. So I want to be alive indefinitely. This may or may not be possible, but it doesn't change the fact that it is desirable.
Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't mind an eternal or greatly extended life. But seeing as how I will not be cognizant of my nonexistence upon my death, I don't think it's worth getting too hung up about. I am probably too old to make the cutoff for the singularity -- or whatever similar event might kick off the path to eternal or thousand-year lifespans. So I find that it's best to maintain a cautiously optimistic attitude about my mortality. I am not expecting immortality, but it would be nice.
Would you condemn others to the same fate?
I don't think that's a fair question, given that I haven't said anything of the sort. I would love for everyone to live as long as they could and prosper to whatever extent they could. I bear no animus to anyone who will win the birth lottery and be born into the age of 1,000-year lifespans. Similarly, I do not revel in the unfortunate fates of those who were born in the dark ages.
Comments
I know OP meant well, but I hated this. I hate the beads. I hate the jars. I hate the thinking behind all of this.
For the record, I'm almost as old as OP and this is all the opposite of how I think. I cherish every day. I can't wait to get to work. And to play. And to eat good food, drink good beer, and hang out with good friends and family. Yesterday, I jogged through the woods, emailed 15 friends, had cake and ice cream with my mother, hung out on hacker news, and wrote some really cool code. Today will probably be even better.
Moving a bead from one jar to the other is not only depressing, it's sick. Throw out those jars, OP, and get on doing what you love.
I don't care how old I am or how old anyone else is. I don't even want to think about my death, I just want to keep on living my life.
I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather did, not screaming and yelling like everyone else in the car.
I don't even want to think about my death, I just want to keep on living my life.
Aging is ridiculously unfair, but ignoring it doesn't stop it from happening. The Reaper keeps track of the beads whether or not you do. People get old. Their bodies and minds slowly break down. At some point they have to stop working, stop driving, stop doing lots of things they love doing.
This accounting of days sounds depressing at first, but I can speak from experience: you soon go back to your normal level of happiness, but with a more accurate view of reality. I think a similar thing happens with terminally ill patients, although the time scale is shorter.
The terminal illness analogy maps pretty well to aging. So much so that I encourage people to donate to anti-aging research such as the Methuselah Foundation (https://www.mfoundation.org/?pn=mj_donate) or SENS (http://www.sens.org/donate). I just donated $50 the latter.
Really good TED talk from the founder of SENS, Aubrey de Grey: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...
How is aging ridiculously unfair?
It's likely that many people who are alive today will be around to take advantage of future anti-aging treatments. So if you're young enough, you win the birth lottery. Hooray, indefinite life span is yours. Otherwise, you wither and die.
How is that not ridiculously unfair?
It's not ridiculously unfair because you're in the same boat as everyone who has died before.
Who said life was fair? Why should death be?
I look at it this way: the near-eternity that occurred before my birth didn't bother me. So I won't be bothered by the eternity that occurs after my death. I won't be around to contemplate it.
You can take this line of thinking to either of its natural conclusions: the morbid one or the "seize the day" one. I'm somewhere in the middle. I try to seize the day, but I'm a realist.
Some days I grab life by the nuts. Some days I count the beads.
Life isn't fair but it should be.
I won't be bothered by the eternity that occurs after my death.
Would you mind if you died tomorrow? What about in a year? 10 years? 100? 1,000? If you had a choice in the matter, would you ever want to age and die? Would you condemn others to the same fate?
I want to be alive tomorrow. Tomorrow I will want to be alive the next day. And so on. So I want to be alive indefinitely. This may or may not be possible, but it doesn't change the fact that it is desirable.
Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't mind an eternal or greatly extended life. But seeing as how I will not be cognizant of my nonexistence upon my death, I don't think it's worth getting too hung up about. I am probably too old to make the cutoff for the singularity -- or whatever similar event might kick off the path to eternal or thousand-year lifespans. So I find that it's best to maintain a cautiously optimistic attitude about my mortality. I am not expecting immortality, but it would be nice.
Would you condemn others to the same fate?
I don't think that's a fair question, given that I haven't said anything of the sort. I would love for everyone to live as long as they could and prosper to whatever extent they could. I bear no animus to anyone who will win the birth lottery and be born into the age of 1,000-year lifespans. Similarly, I do not revel in the unfortunate fates of those who were born in the dark ages.