'To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.'
Immortality by Milan Kundera
I enjoyed the book; it surprised me because it wasn't what I
expected- not in a better/worse sense but rather… I don’t know how to say it. Usually
we like books because we can associate ourselves with the hero, we either wish to be
the hero or we admire him/her… in any case one must have relationship with the
main character otherwise one would not care what happens to him or her. Damory is not really that kind of ‘hero’. I cannot say
I could associate myself with him or that I really liked him or always liked
how he handled things that came his way but he gave me a new perspective… well the author gave me
an entirely new perspective… I might have not agreed but I saw why… and I could understand the despair and will with which he
continued chasing immortality because without it life did not give him pleasure
or sense… I wouldn't do that… not for
immortality. But I do believe each of us have that thing… the thing that drives
us… drives us up and down and most of the time completely mad!
Fate is a story
about fate (no surprise there :) ) and immortality… about obsession, strong-will and never ending series
of events that I did not think possible to fit into one life time (as the book
is mostly account of what happened before he made himself immortal, I still consider
it a ‘lifetime’). The paradox is that although Francis Damory tamed immortality
he did not get from it what he wanted (this is not a spoiler because he starts telling the story 200 years after he was born so one figures he succeeded) … so one can argue that, ultimately, immortality
was what he sought all his life. The story, however, has an open ending and
open ending means there are still lessons to be learned.
Frankly, I do not believe that any person ever truly wanted
to be immortal.
Immortality is a myth with which our minds simply love to play.Oh, it opens up so many possibilities!!!
However, I sometimes I doubt people truly realise what
immortality is. Let’s say you contemplate about it… you imagine yourself living
100 or 200 years from now… not really 3000 years later! If you do, you imagine
your present self living in that distant future that has a long road to go before
coming to being. If you ever lived so long wouldn't your present self be just a
distant if even existent memory of another life… of another person? In that sense,
I suspect that the ‘I’ that longed to be immortal would be long dead. It’s a
bit of catch 22.
The story got me thinking though, whether I would accept or
not if by miracle I would be presented with the elixir of life. I weighted my
options carefully… and came to the conclusion that pretty much everything about
immortality sucks with the exception of having enough time to read and learn everything I want! Imagine the terror of
watching all the people you love die... one by one… imagine that you would have
to leave home because the fact that you look well too young for being hundred
years old is getting a little suspicious… you would have to leave everything
behind… Imagine that you have the whole eternity and that fact completely
changes who you are… the eternity makes it impossible for you to be understood
by any other person in the world… You are alone… and you are trapped because you
no longer have the choice of dying… the pain of it all would be insufferable.
But there is so much in the world that fascinates me and so
many things I want to know and the more I read the more I realise I know less
then I knew before because I have discovered a whole new dimension of knowledge…
it’s paralysing… it does not happen very often but when it does it’s
devastating. I am paralysed by the insignificance and limitations of my own
being… but then I start to breathe again and remind myself that it’s OK… just
keep breathing… just keep going… I can
work with that little I know and maybe one day I will end up with a very big
pile of ‘little’. Plus the things I choose to know because I can't know it all make me who I am... if I had no time limit, I would have never made many decisions that shaped me... which would be a pity because I kind of like who I am and where I am.
However, I loathe that feeling because it makes me genuinely
scared and, most of all, it makes me want to have more time… but more time is
very different from immortality. Frankly, I do not understand why they call it
the elixir of life… because if it makes you immortal it takes you outside the
circle of life… and perhaps you would not be dead per se but you would not be
part of life either. Isn’t the essence of life the fact that it cannot be
preserved? Is that the essence of us? I do not want to go too deep into a
philosophical discourse but to me people… our souls are not something static
but something that is constantly evolving… in a sense we spend our life
constructing ourselves… the necessity, the urge to learn is in our very core.
Life is a (r)evolution!
Therefore, I believe that immortality is a particularly cruel
kind of death sentence. It’s like voluntarily freezing yourself in one of the
initial phases of a computer game while watching everyone else progress to
higher levels… I do not know what comes after death but anything is better than
being buried alive by immortality, getting stuck in the purgatory because... I
guess that will come a time in life of every hypothetical immortal man when he/she realises
that life is not only about time… it is not about the absence of death…
What people actually crave is not immortality but longevity.
We wish to stay young longer and live longer… which I guess is understandable. The
thing is… we don’t even know how much we’ve got and we are already asking for
more. We are afraid to run out of time but do we actually make good use of it???
‘Cause being afraid about not having enough does not seem like a wise way to
spend it…
People worry too much and don’t dance enough…
Oh well, in any case, Fate is a good book especially if you
are the adventurous quest/journey type… and if you like alchemy, mystery a wee bit of magic as well as enjoy historical themes (it gives you a great account of the society in the
18th century across Europe, a bit of Africa and bit of Asia…I am
truly impressed by the research the author must have made for this book to work)…
