Immortality’s illusion: When longer life may not mean living!

Raju Korti
Almost every day, I read with morbid curiosity (!) the internet awash with dazzling headlines about scientists creating artificial hearts that could beat forever, stem cell therapies promising to wipe out diabetes, and organs that might one day resist all forms of damage. Read together, these advances carry an intoxicating suggestion: that humanity is inching towards immortality. But if you pause and think, the prospect is as troubling as it is exciting.

It is fine to wish that someone lives 100 years (literally) or 1000 years (figuratively). But I seriously wonder if anyone would really want to live beyond 150 years, walking on an earth that continues to age, fracture, and recycle its sorrows, while you remain unnaturally preserved. The body may not crumble, but the world around you surely will. Political strife, climate scars, and unchanging human mindsets would still persist. In fact, the longer you live, the more weather-beaten and time-scarred you might feel. Longevity could deepen disillusionment rather than erase it.

(Pic representational)

Human immortality still belongs more to theory than reality. Yet advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology suggest lifespans could increase dramatically. Some scientists insist there is a natural ceiling to human life. Others believe that merging artificial intelligence with biology could help us defeat aging itself. In truth, much of the current focus is less on endless life and more on extending health, repairing the body, and delaying decline.

I recently stumbled upon research that seeks to remind us that biology has its own ceiling. Even with perfect health, resilience steadily erodes. Young bodies bounce back completely from illness or injury. Older bodies only reclaim part of their former vitality, and this erosion continues until a tipping point is reached. Studies suggest that the upper limit of recovery lies somewhere between 120 and 150 years. That figure is not merely a statistical curiosity. It is a reminder that the end of life is coded into our very biology.

And yet, even if science breaks this ceiling, can it solve the crises of meaning that come with existence itself? Existential angst may only sharpen in a world where you cannot escape time’s sameness. Would endless days make us more purposeful, or merely more restless? It is worth recalling the timeless dialogue from the film Anand: “Babumoshai, life should be big, not long.” The wisdom lies not in stretching years but in deepening experience.

There is also a beauty in life’s ironies, in its oscillation between joy and grief. As one song reminds us:
न मिलता ग़म तो बर्बादी के अफ़्साने कहाँ जाते
अगर दुनिया चमन होती तो वीराने कहाँ जाते
चलो अच्छा हुआ अपनों में कोई ग़ैर तो निकला
अगर होते सभी अपने तो बेगाने कहाँ जाते.
(If sorrow did not exist, the tales of ruin would not be told.
If the world were only a garden, where would the deserts go?
It is perhaps good that among loved ones a stranger appears,
If everyone were one’s own, where would the outsiders go?).
Another lyric lingers in memory:
ज़िन्दा रहने के मौसम बहुत हैं मगर
जान देने की रुत रोज़ आती नहीं
(There are many seasons for staying alive,
But the season for surrender does not come every day.)

Immortality, stripped of these contrasts, risks becoming unbearably monotonous. For without endings, beginnings lose their magic. Without fragility, strength has no meaning. Without death, life loses its urgency.

In chasing immortality, humanity may achieve a technical triumph but suffers a philosophical defeat. For it is not the length of our years that matters but the depth with which we inhabit them. Perhaps true immortality lies not in endless time, but in living moments so intensely that they defy time altogether.