Like all animals, we humans wear out. We get osteoarthritis, we lose our hearing, our eyesight goes up the pictures, we go deaf, we cant taste or smell much any more. Our muscle strength waves goodbye, our lungs clog, a sense of balance is a well remembered thing of the past.

The problem is we no longer heal as we used to. When youre a child, fall over running in the playground, skin your knee down to the bone, two days later its as if it never happened. When youre clocking on a bit, a minor paper cut takes weeks to heal.

Hence for just about as long as mortals have been around, people have sought the secret of immortality. I can think of two routes worthy of investigation. One is to stay a teenager. Every teenager who isnt an Emo knows he or she is immortal. I certainly was. And when you know youre immortal, you get into all sorts of bad habits and behaviours, many of which ironically have the potential to shorten your lifespan, something you as a teen know but dont believe applies to you.

Freezing time is anyway a no-no, so we need to adopt a more scientific approach, and heres what I suggest. We need to find a way of being made up only of liver cells. The liver is a damned fine organ. It spends 24 hours a day being roughed up by the world, mugged by many and varied chemical toxins both natural and artificial, and within extremely elastic limits it just gets up, dusts itself down, and asks you if thats your best shot. You have to kick a liver around really badly before it says, OK, you win.

I mention this because I found out something surprising this week. Surprising? Remarkable more like. My liver function tests reveal it to be in tiptop condition, as bright eyed and bushy tailed as can be. Considering the amount of metabolic abuse I have meted out to it over the past half century plus, its a testament to natures resilience and engineering skills. Bravo liver. So you can see the point of my contention. Livers are pretty well indestructible, and if we were composed of liver cells wed be on the way to immortality.

Personally, the idea doesnt appeal. Unless you happen to be Bowerick Wowbagger with an urge and an infinite amount of time to insult every being in the Universe, youre going to get bored. Weve all had days where the space/time continuum is distorted, and five minutes become hours of unremitting tedium. Imagine that going on for centuries, millennia, geological ages, eons.

No thanks.

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How to become immortal - stopthefud