I was listening to a fantasy epic recently, and one of the characters more or less “became” immortal.
That in and of itself is not mind-blowing in the fantasy genre. It’s actually a rather common trope, like a recreation of Greek myths of old.
This time, though, it led me to think about the end.
As in, death. Mortality. And more than that, even. Entropy.
I know, I know, I lost you.
I’ll take you back to sophomore year physics class for a bit. Entropy is referenced in Isaac Newton’s second law of thermodynamics, which basically says that entropy, which is a gradual decline into disorder, always increases in an isolated system.
In my example, the “isolated system” is the universe. As time passes, the universe tends to fall into disorder. Its ultimate rock bottom state is a bunch of random particles, the most base level of matter and energy, randomly distributed throughout space. No rocks, no planets, no stars, no humans. The universe wants to be that, more or less.
You can see the evidence all around you. Erosion sweeps away rock and dirt into the sea. The sun burns and blasts out a little more of its energy, and its fusion engine loses a little more fuel, so that one day it will run out and collapse within itself. We are alive now, but we are destined to die, and when we do, our bodies break down into smaller particles once more.
And so I thought about this character whom had attained immortality, and considered: was this such a great thing after all? To be in defiance of the natural course of the universe? What would any such creature find to be of value?
If you value nothing, does life have meaning?
If I was some immortal demi-god, I wouldn’t need to fear death. Since I will not experience death, I have endless time. Time would then lose its value for me, much like other very common substances, like water or air.
Didn’t get my workout in today? No worries, I will do it tomorrow. There will always be a “tomorrow” for me. Time only has value because we mortal beings know that, one day, time will run out. Death will come, and we will have no more time.
If the sun never stops shining or running out of fuel, it will never supernova or become a red giant. And so the Earth will never be swallowed up by an expanding star, nor receive less than its normal allotment of heat and light.
The Earth would never change.
Would we value it less? Likely. Some would say we value it little enough even with the knowledge that it is not a permanent thing, but I digress.
Death is a form of an ending. And an ending is change. For in everything that changes, something new is born—but it rises from the destruction of the old. Every breath we take brings in air, filled most critically with oxygen, which is “destroyed” in our cells and reconstituted as carbon dioxide and breathed out.
Change. Something is removed. Something else replaces it.
And so, death, ending, change, these are the basis for everything we value. We value our lives because they may end. We value money because we can lose it. We value people because they die too.
The fears of death and change are among our most crippling ailments, and yet they are also the most necessary for us to live lives of meaning.
Don’t fear your end or wish to become immortal. Instead, recognize that that inevitability makes every day you live count and every experience matter.