X-Message-Number: 2626
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS:re.friends.and.lovers
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 1994 23:38:43 -0800 (PST)


About feelings about friends and lovers:

Yes, Perry, I know very well that people often don't like being told things.
I was saying that I would not be able to enjoy the presence of my wife
if she had not signed up for suspension. 

As for what will happen to friends and lovers if everyone lives for a very
long time, I've personally thought about that for a long time. Basically, 
if both people continue to grow, someday they will grow away from one another.
I hope that when that first starts to happen those involved (why do I speak
in the third person? I am included!) will understand, and especially not
take that growth as any kind of rebuke or denigration.

I have seen many separations, and most of them were angry for a long time
afterward. If a couple is raising children, or undertaking any kind of
joint project in which both are involved and both feel it important, 
the separation usually turns quite painful. I hope that when immortality 
(or some approximation of it) comes, people will feel implicitly that 
30 years together may be fine, but 100 may well be too much, just as a matter
of the time involved.

As for what really will happen, of course I can't say. And as for feeling close
to someone who has not arranged for their suspension, I would find it 
impossible not to think just of the present but of the future for many years,
and that locomotive simply would not seem so far away.

			Long long life,
				Thomas Donaldson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2626