The Derivative Cost of Living Forever

Act I:

The context: I laid there this morning and thought of people in my past. It was an influenza of sentiment that passed through my psyche. Every single person I have ever interacted with is written into my soul in some capacity. I'd love to find some way to forget some of them entirely. But only some.

Maybe they'll develop a drug for that someday when they understand the brain better. Selective cognitive erasure.

In contrast: Imagine how rude it would be to reencounter a person from your past, someone you liked but lost touch with, only to find a blank stare in return; to find that they had erased you from their memory unannounced. The betrayal! The revelation!

Act II:

You affect people in ways you don't recognize. And there's no way to conceive the extent entirely. There isn't a complete knowledge available to any one person. You must live with the messiness of existing and being partial. In fact, the more capable you are of navigating that messiness, the more robust and vivid your living experience. As a consequence, you must reckon with all those personalities etched into your soul.

At some point, the cost of interdependence seems too high and so does the cost of staying alive. But we borrow against our future to maintain ourselves. And as long we can keep ourselves going, there's no shame in it. Listen, we are designed to move forward, indefatigably and courageously and naturally.

By 'borrowing against our future', I mean the procrastinations, concessions, compromises we assume to get by. All those little dishonesties arranged as a bouquet in the back of our minds, adorning our self images. No one lives their life in complete honesty. Everyone shits.

These compromises are 'borrowed against our future' because they must be rectified down the road. And if they aren't corrected for and processed, they become baggage. With enough accumulated baggage, you become an awkward, calcified and fractured soul. (This could be you, you know. It could be me also.)

Act III:

Those that are solving for death as a curable disease may not recognize the derivative work that's required for people to live extended lives. I'd guess, it requires a complete destruction and reinvention of a personality every 27 years or so. And I'm aware that those rebuilds are no walk in the park. (Sit with an addict or a young crying child for further data.)

Now that I think about it, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they find a biomedical way to solve for psychological baggage a generation from now.

Selective cognitive erasure.

That's a curious scene: a population of 200 year old humans that appear to be 27 with no recollection of a time in which their bodies were born and fallible, with personalities as clean as swept sand.

200 year olds, perky and oblivious.