ELF

No, not the Earth Liberation Front...

I saw a bumper sticker today that read ELF: Everyone Lives Forever.

Um, no. Not gonna happen. Just once. That one lifetime can be broken into infinite increments, however, if you want to get technical. But you started when sperm met egg, and you'll end when your time's up. Not to say I believe in fate. All things being equal, you have some measure of control. A range. But from dust you have come, and to dust you shall return. Your consciousness, derivative from your brain, will go when all the neural impulses stop, upon death. Your brain will turn to dust. No more you. Fin. You will not be reanimated. Your life experience is not stored anywhere else but in your head. You are not on disk. You are your body, and your experience is not virtual.

Immortality, or some form of life-after-death/hereafter, can only be achieved through memories, ideas, art, family, and your consequences, whatever form those may take, be it from a puff of breeze from your dying breath to a flower growing from your gravesite to a cult to a festival or holiday celebrating your life's work, like Shakespeare or Martin Luther King or Washington's birthday, to a cookboog, or maybe even a blog.

Everyone living forever is inconceivable. Our dna is different, and souls don't exist, and forever is fricking infinite, which means the entire lifetime of our universe is as a fraction of a second or something. Sorry to rain on your parade, silly Jesus-freak Christian, but them's the facts, I would say. As the trite tv show says, One Life to Live. Danny Elfman sings No One Lives Forever. That song might live forever, though :-)

"People living deeply have no fear of death." -Anais Nin