{"id":497,"date":"2006-06-14T22:21:13","date_gmt":"2006-06-15T06:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/?p=497"},"modified":"2007-07-30T22:13:15","modified_gmt":"2007-07-31T06:13:15","slug":"situation-107","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/?p=497","title":{"rendered":"Situation #107"},"content":{"rendered":"

I might as well be a vampire. The only bright side is I can sunbathe and I can live without drinking blood. My biggest secret, if I had any big ones, would probably be that I’m over 900 years old. But I’m lousy with secrets and honest to a fault, so I’m likely the object of much speculation among doctors and scientists as I fail to show any signs of normal aging. I hate the tests they put me through, but it’s better than hiding my identity and constantly leaving friends and family to start my life anew.<\/p>\n

Not that I have many friends and family. I’ve outlived many of them, and I honestly don’t know how my heart continues to pump blood—it’s been broken so many times by all the loss and the grief, all the mourning I’ve had to do. I don’t know how my body does it, when I’ve so often lost the will to live.<\/p>\n

Though I’ll admit that after the first few centuries, it got easier to accept, and I learned to celebrate people’s life while they lived. I learned to cherish every moment I had with them, every smile they sent my way.<\/p>\n

But their lives are so short! It pains me when they don’t live to their full potential. It’s like they have no idea how little time they have, especially compared to me. It makes me wonder why they waste so many of their hours.<\/p>\n

They don’t know. They just don’t know! And no matter how hard I try to tell them what lies ahead, they make the same mistakes over and over again. It’s only when their life wanes that they begin to understand what it is to live, and by then it’s too late. Their bodies are old. Their minds are frail. And they’ve run out of time. It frustrates me to no end.<\/p>\n

There are times when the pain and the frustration is too much, and I’d rather not be around people at all. But it gets lonely. Not that it is any less lonely having people around, when you know you’ll outlive them, but it’s good to be able to share experiences with someone, old and inside jokes, tales about your childhood.<\/p>\n

I’ll tell you what, though. Historians love me. I know the little things, the everyday detail things they never discuss in the history books. I know them because I lived through them. And it’s true, those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. I’ve seen so many civilizations come and go, so many empires rise and fall. People don’t seem to understand that everything is cyclical. So I love the historians right back because they’re the only ones who see that.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, religious people and superstitious people are wary and afraid of me, sometimes even hate me, and I hate them right back. I’ve been accused of being a witch and have quite often barely escaped with my life. In those early times, I’ve had<\/em> to be secretive. My life depended on it. They attack anything they don’t understand, and they don’t understand a whole lot. They don’t want<\/em> to understand anything they don’t already know for a certainty. They never want to question their own beliefs, their own ideas of what’s normal, what’s good, or what’s bad.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen knowledge develop and then disappear without a trace. The doctors, scientists, and historians—they’re usually on the side of developing knowledge. When they rule, the society is so much like a person living to his full potential, and it makes me so proud of their progress. It’s when the other types of people—those superstitious and suspicious folk—when they rule the world that it gets like a person dying, and I mourn the loss of another great society, like a great library going up in flames.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I get jaded sometimes. My only consolation is my own passion for learning. There’s so much to do, to learn, and to experience that I don’t think there is enough time in the world if you really wanted to have it all.<\/p>\n

It would be better though, if there were somebody else like me by my side. Then I could have all those shared experiences, those old and inside jokes, and someone I cared about in my life who truly understood me and all that I’ve been through. That’s really the only thing that makes a long life worth living, don’t you think? Otherwise, the intensity and passion for life just isn’t there.<\/p>\n

And you might as well live a normal lifespan.<\/p>\n

This entry was inspired by Question #107 in The Book of Questions<\/a>, page 94: Would you like to have your rate of physical aging slowed by a factor of thirty so as to give you a life expectancy of about 2,000 years?<\/i><\/p>\n

Not really.<\/p>\n

And the additional questions that went this question?<\/p>\n

How hard would it be to outlive and lose each person you grew close to?<\/em><\/p>\n

Very hard.<\/p>\n

If you lived a greatly lengthened life, would you experience so much that you’d soon feel surrounded by children?<\/em><\/p>\n

Probably! I feel that way now sometimes.<\/p>\n

Would you be able to adjust to the dramatic social changes?<\/em><\/p>\n

I would, if the social changes were for the better. However, if I had to live through the Greek and Roman times and then somehow plunge from that greatness to live through the Dark Ages, I’d go insane and be stoned as a witch.<\/p>\n

Would you soon grow jaded, feeling there was nothing interesting left?<\/em><\/p>\n

Probably. I don’t know.<\/p>\n

Does feeling that life is too short increase the intensity and passion of it in a desirable way?<\/em><\/p>\n

Absolutely. Yes.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, I’ve made this a little more obvious than the last<\/em> situation<\/a>.<\/p>\nShare this post:

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I might as well be a vampire. The only bright side is I can sunbathe and I can live without drinking blood. My biggest secret, if I had any big ones, would probably be that I’m over 900 years old. But I’m lousy with secrets and honest to a fault, so I’m likely the object of much speculation among doctors and scientists as I fail to show any signs of normal aging. I hate the tests they put me through,…<\/p>\n

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