Lately at night in the bathroom, I looked into the mirror and welcomed the new wrinkles which joined me secretly during the day. While brushing my teeth I started pondering … uhm… yes, while brushing my teeth I am often pondering about a lot of things. There is not a lot you can do in those two to three minutes and so my thoughts start traveling and boy, they can get far in that short time…!!! But back to the topic!

I pondered about how we would live our lives if we knew we had forever! What if we were not aging and if our bodies would stay healthy forever. What if our bodies were not meant to die or fall apart? What if not only our souls but also our physical appearance would be immortal?

First, it sounds like a relief, like freedom and a completely stress-free life. Pretending to be forever young sounds wonderful since nobody wants to get old. Even if you are fine with who you are, you are not waiting impatiently to turn old, right? (At least not from a certain age on.) But the thought that weighed much more immediately was: Would that really be a blessing? If we had no limitations we could not overcome them. If we had no “dead” line we would not try to fill the time we have with as many memories as we can. We would not feel pushed to keep it going and achieve something as long as we have the chance to.

I just think of politics. If a leader was not limited in the time he is elected would he be motivated to make changes and make them as soon as possible? If we had forever, progress might happen a lot slower. When people are not forced to achieve things within a specific time why should they stress themselves out? Perhaps we were not forced to achieve great things at all because we don’t need to leave something when we leave because we don’t leave anyway! But then again, if we were certain that we had forever perhaps we might be more peaceful, less hectic, and less competitive (in a positive way) too.

But then again new challenges would appear like if no one dies or get older we only had people of more similar interests, we might have the wisdom because the longer you are here the longer you learn. But there is no reflecting when you see that there are fewer days in front of you than behind you. Would we want to make efforts to forgive since there was no threat that a time comes when we cannot do it anymore? Of course, there is a lot more that would come with being physically immortal like not being able to be killed, when do we stop physically developing, an overcrowded planet where we would be trapped forever, …!! HELP!!!

There is a big reason behind the meaning of limitation and of decaying of all physical. Imagine a child that builds up a tower with its blocks. At one point there are no blocks left. The child has to break the tower down in order to build something new! It will also learn to be more careful during the building process because it doesn’t want the tower to break down before it is done. It is the reason why we came here. We are forced to make use of what we have. We are forced to fill our years with meaning. We are forced to develop in order to get where we want to arrive. We need to experience what it means to lose something in order to appreciate what we have. This limited lifetime holds a lot of lessons that we would never experience otherwise. We would never cherish life itself!!! I think the things that mean the most to us are those which we know are not meant forever. And that is one of the most important lessons we learn here: Gratitude and Awareness!

We learn about being thankful for friends and dear people. We learn about being thankful for health. We learn to be thankful for help and support. And we only learn this when we experienced how it feels when we lost it once or were close to losing it. That makes us compassionate. Yes, the thought of saying goodbye, of getting ill, or old and frail can be scary. But the thought of living forever here feels a lot scarier to me. The meaning of life would get lost. And this meaning is why we chose to come here to planet earth. We intended to learn from the opposition, from becoming and dying. I imagine that frustration and depression could take over even more too! Perhaps we even came here because we were tired of being immortal!

I go with the Bruce Lee quote on top. No, I don’t want to live forever down here BUT I hope that I will always get the chance to come back!

In Love and Light