More of the Same

On a recent sleepless night Chuck was raging against mortality, skinny boned horror stricken at the realization and the re-realization of how many things he simply would not get to do in this life. Chuck found the situation completely unacceptable. In what could only be called a desperate and defiant gesture of indignation he went to the computer and began typing a list of all that he would do if he could only be free of the absurd deadline of mortality.

Chuck was delighted to think of all he could accomplish in just another 100 years. In this first bonus century he scheduled:
- the shattering of several artistic paradigms
- a great deal of catch-up reading
- a lot more (and better) writing
- several musical instruments mastered (starting with the saxophone and ending up with the piano)
- extensive travel to all the places that really seemed “essential”.
- a great deal of casual sex
- still more reading

In the next few centuries Chuck pressed on unhesitatingly in the same general manner, inventing entirely new artistic genres, still more and still better writing (including some revisionist experimentations with rhyme), more (and more distant) travel, a score more musical instruments (each one making the next one easier it seemed to him), cooking a great number of fabulous meals to be shared with warm company in exotic places. And of course, lots of reading, reading and sex.

In the next few hundred years planes and boats figured prominently, and at the same time Chuck found himself making a transition from the arts to science, but he was really still approaching it all from an aesthetic standpoint. Midway into this transition he began to get an annoying sense of guilt regarding his preceding half millennium of self-indulgence, and this led Chuck to begin an intense phase of altruism. He proceeded in fits and starts in this strange new territory for a few decades but then finally caught his stride, knocking off world hunger, and world peace before the turn of the next century. Buoyed by these successes Chuck went on to tackle a tangle of infectious and hereditary disease. But as he considered this option realistically he realized that by that time in the future (some time in the next millennium) less selfish individuals would probably have taken care of these less stimulating tasks. Continuing with that thought Chuck realized that it was quite likely that all he had envisioned spending the preceding few centuries on (world peace, eradicating hunger, etc….) would have likely also been covered by a similar group of do-gooders a few hundred years earlier while chuck was getting hot on the trombone, or inventing new genres of theater.

In view of this probability Chuck had to bump his whole schedule back practically a half a millennium. Mentally adjusting to this shift caused a strange feeling in him that he hadn’t anticipated – something of a growing dread at having to imagine how he was going to fill the hours, fill the years, fill the millennia. It was in this time of growing darkness - not surprisingly - that Chuck hit on the whole spiritual enlightenment thing. Though he was bit embarrassed at not having thought of it sooner, he cut himself some slack, got right into it, and in no time he was back to his old self, burning up the decades, first getting fully reborn, remade, bodhissatva’d and then brilliantly spreading the word.

Of course that begs the question, “after enlightenment, now what?” Chuck probably would have had another crisis at this point were it not for the fact that he was enlightened – which it seemed to him is quite nice card to be carrying. But truthfully, the next few centuries were a bit lack luster. He picked up a few more instruments, re-re-read the classics (a category greatly expanded in the intervening centuries), and dabbled in theater, film and entertainment. These last few activities also precipitated a resurgence in casual sex – very casual sex, but not particularly very good sex. In any case Chuck passed through all this with less enthusiasm than he had ever felt. He sensed this change as part of a general downward trend of millennial (literally) proportion, and projecting forward just a bit Chuck was gripped by a horror he had never felt. He tried to explain it, to rationalize it away -- maybe it was just the result of being in the film business -- maybe it was a side effect of mediocre sex? In the end Chuck had to face the truth, he was used up, burned, done, charred, ready for recycling. Only in this scenario he had imagined for himself checking out was not an option.

Chuck contemplated dealing with that reality, dealing with the constant challenge of boredom coming over him slowly but unstoppably like a creeping rust. As he considered just having to deal with the days, the years, the millennia, the eons, the software upgrades, coming and coming. And all that time he was without a rest from being irrevocably stuck with himself. It was all too horrifying. He thought of how any of his oldest friends would be thousands of years younger than him, or dead, so he really had no one else to even talk to about it. He realized with a sudden clarity that the only thing more frightening than facing death is facing immortality.

Chuck cried for a little while. He turned off the computer. He went to bed and fell into a very deep sleep. In the morning he overslept. Rushing to get to work on time he briefly recalled the whole exercise from the night before. But he soon forgot about it, and he hasn’t thought of it at all for a moment since.