What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

The idea behind this question is something I’ve given thought to several times over the last 15-20 years. When someone thinks about “living a very long life” I often wonder how my idea differs.

One of the first times I gave any thought to the idea I didn’t fully comprehend the ramifications. I was much younger and fairly naive. I thought it would be awesome if I could be immortal and live forever, then I would be able to see and do so many cool things.

As I got older, “forever” changed to maybe a thousand years or so. Then it became a few hundred.

I’ve watched a lot of shows and movies with vampires and immortality or the like, and it didn’t dawn on me until much more recently that living exceedingly long lives could drastically change the development of humanity. What really influenced my change in mind was much more personal.

I forget where I heard it or read it, but someone talks about one of the saddest things of immortality is watching your loved ones grow old and eventually die. Partners and friends. Kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, and so on for the rest of forever. You would be so disconnected from everything. Now granted you could find the strength to move on, find a new partner and start another family lineage, but you would just be repeating the same thing each time. At some point there would likely be a mental breakdown.

This is why I started to cut back on the length of time I thought I would be comfortable with living. A few hundred years to see where the world goes, and to watch over the next few generations of my family. I want to see where technology ends up taking us, and if humanity finds a way to flourish beyond what we are today. A living connection to the past to offer some guidance and wisdom, so that I might still contribute to that hope of flourishing.

But really, I just want to see flying cars and Full-dive VRMMO technology like Sword Art Online. Maybe I could leave myself as a ghost in the machine…

Anyways, I don’t want to live forever but I think I could handle the mental and emotional strain of a few hundred years of extra life.