I just finished reading this book called the Alchemist. It is a very compelling story about following your dreams. What I found most intriguing about the book is the depth of spirituality it brought out in me. I am basically atheist in my beliefs now, but the book talks about communicating with the soul of the world. Also another point it brings out is how all of us have a destiny to fullfill and therefore a choice. We can either learn to listen to our hearts and follow our dreams. Or we can listen to the wisdom and desires of others and live with the pang of regret.
I have pondered deeply the thoughts that came to me from this book and have come to a stark realization. I would never want to live forever. The age old critique of living forever is 'wouldn't you get bored?' The witness spiel as we been told, is that there will be all these new revelations (never mind that the old ones dont hold water) and productive work to do. Have you ever heard a witness tell the story of how they want to learn to play the piano in the new system? The story goes that Since we will be perfect it will be easy to become a concert pianist. But it goes on that this person also wants to build the piano himself, so therefore he must spend time learning to build pianos. Then to take it deeper, the person wants to build the piano out of a certain wood and wants to plant the tree of the certain wood and watch it grow. When his special tree reaches maturity, he will than cut it down and go about building his piano so he can learn to play. The account is wound up by saying how just learning to play the piano can be a 500 year project.
Now lets contrast that with a single lifespan (70-80 years) and the possibility to achive your ultimate goal of following your dreams. As the book points out, life is capable of handing us all the tools necessary to accomplish our goals and also of snatching them away. It will teach you things necesary to survive and test you to the ultimate degree when you near your goal to see if your worthy. So the question is this, which will you find more fullfilling a relatively short span of life, where you accomplish your ultimate goal's, or an endless existance where you meander your way from one project to another because you basically have nothing else to do?