[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Book of Questions #17

[Sister Mary Lunatic]

I guess it would be polite to answer my own question:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>
17.  Would you be willing to become extremely ugly physically if it meant
you would live for a thousand years at any physical age you chose?
	**Auxiliary question :  How much are you affected by a person's physical
appearance?  How would it change your life if something happened to make you
much less attractive than you are now?  Do you find anything disturbing
about immortality?  What age seems ideal to you?
<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Being extremely ugly wouldn't disturb me much.  It might have if I'd been
born extremely ugly and had to grow up that way (those things matter so much
to children), but I was just your average homely kid.  I've never actually
been pretty, so I never had to go through the agony of losing my youthful
beauty, LOL.  It IS depressing to see the signs of aging creeping up on me
(I'm 49)- the loss of health, energy, physical agility, etc.  Since I'm a
person who enjoys being alone a lot, being extremely ugly would not be much
of a hardship.  Ugliness doesn't seem to stop most of the people I see from
loving, being loved, or having friends.  If your loved ones love you because
of your looks, you're in for some bitter years ahead.

If I were to live a thousand years, I'd probably choose to be somewhere
around age 30, where I still had the good health and flexibility of youth,
but didn't look like a kid anymore.  The attraction to living 1,000 years is
LEARNING -- I always joke that I'm either going to be buried with all my
books in my coffin with me, or find out who my next reincarnation will be so
I can leave all my possessions to that person.  You ever hear the motto "You
live and learn, then you die and forget it all" -- that's my problem.  I
love to read, I love to learn, I love to keep my brain active, and I don't
want to lose all that when I die.  Perhaps there is an existence after
death, but my Ego fears there is not.

The negative aspects to living 1,000 years are numerous, of course.  First,
I'd have to earn a living, century after century.  I don't enjoy that -- it
interferes with my private life, heh.  I started counting the days to
retirement the first day I started working.  Another bad aspect is loss of
loved ones -- imagine seeing every single friend or family member age and
die, repeatedly.  You'd go through 20 lifetimes worth of grief.  And of
course, your surroundings would change enormously -- think if you had been
alive since the year 1000 A.D., then think what it would be like to live
until the year 3000 A.D. and imagine what changes there would be.

But when all is said and done, the length of your lifetime is still
relevant -- doesn't matter if you live 25 years or 925 years, it's what you
do with those years.  I like the fantasy of living 1000 years, but I KNOW
the reality could be very grim.  It also could be amazing.  And at the end
of that thousand years, you'd discover that it still really is a very short
time compared to Infinity, or even compared to human history.

SML

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on,
and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
 -- Shakespeare