Men have always wanted to live forever. We think as though if we could just find the elixir of life, we’d have also found the potion for eternal bliss. But living forever and living happily forever are two completely different things. In fact, given the chance to really live forever, I believe not few of us would soon regret having taken that chance. What is there to live forever for in 200 years? In 600? In a thousand or in ten thousand years? Wouldn’t we have been tired already of doing the same things over again? Of celebrating the holidays like we’ve always done before? Of doing the routines that would keep us fit, or even of inventing some new way of entertaining ourselves?
At one point or another, maybe we’d arrive at what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes- there is nothing new under the sun. We’d get tired of the cycles we’ve been so happy about before. We’d care not for the showers of spring, nor for the snow that falls in winter. We’d find the meaninglessness of everything. And as Buddhists believe, we’d realize that we’d soon desire to escape the endless suffering we’ve subjected ourselves into. The very thing we’ve desperately desired to possess, the one thing we’d have lusted for would have become our own curse.
For people who seek forever, let a contemplation be made on how that forever is going to be spent and for what need that would serve us all. If not, and if wishes were granted indeed, we may have just been praying for our own hell, a hell we may not be able to escape. There is nothing new under the sun, and everything is passing as this world is whose fate had already been set since its fall. Everything shall come to an end except for one thing, the only thing that needs nothing new under the sun. Indeed, what remains is LOVE, the only thing that yields not to death but makes all things eternal, beautiful and new. 🙂
