Is Immortality Truly a Curse?
What Makes Immortality Miserable Also Ruins Mortality
Why do so many of us, prominent philosophers included, fear immortality?
We warn of the pain of watching loved ones die, of the boredom that arises when time loses all urgency, of the sorrow in witnessing Earth itself consumed by its star. To them, immortality seems a slow descent into meaninglessness—an eternity stripped of stakes.
But these are not curses intrinsic to immortality. They are symptoms of an unskillful relationship to change, time, and self.
The Buddha would see these laments for what they are: attachment masquerading as wisdom.
To grieve endlessly over the death of a loved one is to refuse the impermanence of life, to want more from someone than what they were. But a death, even the death of someone beloved, need not be a wound that festers for eternity. It can be a moment of release, a completion. When we are free from possessive love, their passing becomes an opening for gratitude, not a black hole of yearning. We remember their laughter, their tenderness, their imperfections, and we smile—because they were.
Time scarcity, too, is treated as a necessary ingredient for meaning: “If life has no end, why care about anything?” But this is a misdirection. We shouldn't cherish sunrises because they vanish. We should cherish them because we are present to them. Meaning is not born of a ticking clock but of attention. If you require death to appreciate life, then the problem isn’t in the length of your years—it’s in how you live them.
Then when philosophers speak with dread of watching the sun swell and engulf the Earth in a billion years, I can only shake my head. To behold such a moment would be sublime. To witness the arc of planetary history resolving in a final burst of fusion and flame—what a privilege. What awe. What a story.
No, immortality is not the curse. Carrying a mortal mind into an immortal life is the curse.
It’s not the duration of life that becomes unbearable—it’s the persistence of untransformed wanting. A mind addicted to permanence, to egoic meaning, to the illusion that love is ownership and value is scarcity—such a mind will suffer no matter how long it lives. It will rot from attachment, not from time.
But if you don’t carry that mind, immortality is not a sentence, it becomes a field of possibility—a long unfolding of witness, wonder, and wisdom. A life of constant deepening. A love that matures. An appreciation that no longer relies on endings.
Deep meaning does not arise because things vanish. It arises because we see—and how we see is a choice. Even if the moment repeats, if the eyes that greet it are fresh, then meaning flows all the same.
Let’s stop blaming immortality for the failures of a mortal mind. The true tragedy is not living forever. It’s living forever without growing free.