Kyle and I have spent the past couple nights side by side on our couch in our quiet living room, reading. I am an unabashed bookworm, but Kyle doesn't usually lose himself in a book. Until now. In fact, as I type up this draft on Wednesday night at 10 p.m., the only sounds are my fingers on the keys, the occasional rustle of his pages, and Bailey's soft breathing.
It's pretty much Heaven.
Speaking of the eternal, he's reading The Postmortal by Drew Magary. It's about a world in the near future where a cure for aging is invented. You choose the age at which you want to receive the injections, and voila -- that is where you remain. People can still die of diseases, crimes, and accidents, but your cells and organs... they won't age.
Of course, this scenario presents both extraordinary possibilities and terrifying challenges. I haven't read the book (yet), but can you imagine?
I have, and thus follows a terribly trippy blog post.
Much like one of our favorite assumptive conversations, "What will we do when we win the lottery?," Kyle and I have been talking about the choices in this book as if they're real. He said he'd want to take "The Cure" and potentially live forever. I'm know I wouldn't want that kind of life. These opinions alone present some pretty huge challenges, because we also agreed that we'd have to decide together what we were going to do -- one of us wouldn't take it without the other.
If I gave in and we both took it, he would feel guilty for effectively trapping me in a life I wasn't comfortable with, particularly if I ended up dying in some terrible fashion (the sacrifices we make in marriage, am I right ladies?) Also, if we instead both stayed healthy, he would quite literally be stuck with me forever and ever until the ends of time -- a prospect that doesn't seem to wholly terrify him, but you never know.
If, on the other hand, he gave in and we didn't take it, that sort of sounds like I'm handing my husband a death sentence, no? He wants to live, and I'm not choosing that life. He has to face the bleak unknown just because his backwards, old-fashioned wife hopes to enjoy that big Tempur-Pedic in the sky.
Side note: Aren't we so adorably committed? Maybe talk to us in ten years, or after the Steelers-Cowboys game next season, and see if we would never want to live without each other -- but my money is still on us.
Anyway, that's just one of the many, many, many huge issues you'd have to confront if the premise of this book became a reality. It's such an interesting/terrifying thing to think about.
How's that for a lighthearted Thursday post?
Would you want the chance to live forever?