live forever

The Grim Reaper put his arm around me and declared us friends today. Hopefully this will help cement my place in the land of the living for a good while. He also got me with his scythe a few times, but that was accidental. Other people he whacked on purpose. But not me: I’m his friend.

Today, my imaginary friend said to me, ‘Hey, want to die?’

I, of course, refused, but he kept on about it. ‘Come on. Just for a little while. What harm can it do?’

But, no, I knew better. If I were to die, someone might cut open my head and eat my brain, and a person with an eaten brain has little chance of living forever.

So, ‘no’, I said. ‘No, I shan’t die. You die!’
And then I stopped thinking about him, and he ceased to exist.

If you want to live forever, you can’t trust anyone. Leastways your imaginary trickster friends. You have to keep on your toes and guard your brain well.

I got a late start on this, but I’ve found that the earlier a person starts, the more likely they are to fail. Everyone who took on this goal in the 1700s is dead, as are the vast majority of those who began in the 1800s. As we move further and further into the 1900s, the failure rate keeps dropping. It’s true that people who began in the 2000s do have a slightly better track record than people who-like me-started in 1982, but it’s only a minor advantage.

Of course, there are people who’ve been working towards this goal for over a hundred years now, so they have more experience, but I believe many of them are facing major difficulties I don’t yet have troubling me. And know this, long-timers: you may have gotten a head start, but any of us who succeed will do so at the same time as all others.