To Be Immortal

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering. Bruce Lee

When you really think about it, immortality isn’t something you should want.

I was watching this show called ‘Forever’ on the CW app with my mom, I had seen it when it first aired but she hadn’t. While in Quarantine we have a lot of time to kill.

She turned to me at one point, while I was crying over one particular episode where the son of a Nazi was returning art his father had stolen to its rightful Jewish owners. She asked me why I liked it.

“It’s just a beautiful storyline. I’m sad they cancelled it.”

“It’s just that you’ve always liked shows and movies like that. Especially Age of Adaline, why is that?”

I thought about that for a minute.

The answer I gave was:

“I guess I like seeing how time unfolds for people. To experience great moments but essentially seeing history literally repeat itself. You can learn a lot from it.”

However the more I think about it, the more in depth my answer gets.

We see the concept of immortality in a lot of works. Twilight, Death Becomes Her, Forever, Age of Adaline, Death Note, Dracula, Troy. Some works romanticize immortality as something that everyone should at least think about selling their souls for; you get to be super rich, live in different countries, be friends with loads of famous people, and maybe destroy a monarchy along the way.

Then we have examples like Death Becomes Her with Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, and Goldie Hawn. Those women drank a fancy potion to keep them young and immortal forever; as long as they stayed alive and took care of their bodies. For those of who might not have seen this classic yet (you should) I won’t spoil anything, but I think it’s obvious that things go downhill quickly.

At first, everyone thinks ‘yes, I don’t want to die’ and honestly, who doesn’t wish they could bring someone back? The emotional and physical pain of losing a loved one is indescribable and if given the choice, I’d sell my soul to save someone I love in less than a heartbeat.

I remember when I was in the 7th grade, I was home alone and my mom had just bought Troy. I had a huge crush on Brad Pitt so I put it on.

It left me thinking about one part in particular.

“I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

Out of the trillions of combinations of words in the English language, this is the one that sticks with me the most.

It really is the little things in life that can be the most beautiful. The things that maybe you don’t appreciate until you actually devote a minute to it. Whether it’s your kids laugh or the way a flower blooms, it’s an instant that can never be replicated again. And even if it was, it would never deliver the same feeling as it did the first time it happened.

I was out driving the other day, to nowhere in particular, and I wound up at the beach. I parked and walked around the area for a bit. It was still pretty quiet due to the pandemic but as I walked along there was this little crab just going around and clicking its claws at other shells. It was such a funny little thing. It had a medium sized spiral shell on its back and it was funny how it was running away from the breaking waves. We don’t normally get crabs in our beaches so it was pretty special.

I breathed in the salty air and watched the sun set over the horizon. I thought about how many times I’d seen it before but never really paid any attention to it.

The end of another day. But the beginning of someone else’s on the other side of the world.