Readers have been falling in love with Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting for 40 years. In Tuck Everlasting, ten-year-old Winnie Foster discovers the Tuck family's secret of eternal life, and she has the chance to become immortal herself.
To celebrate Tuck Everlasting's milestone anniversary, the 40 Days for 40 Years blog tour is asking bloggers the question posed by the book: "What if you could live forever?"
If there's one thing I wish I had more of -- one thing that I never have enough of -- it'd be time. Well, OK -- I could always use more money, books, shirtless news, or a myriad of other things, too. But time is such an uncertain commodity. We all only have a finite amount of time, and there's no way of knowing how much of it that we even have. No matter what the SkyMall countdown timer says. (Heck, even that couldn't predict its own demise.)
The scarce nature of time should be an impetus to dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today, and to live your one wild and precious life to the fullest. But if I had the opportunity for literally all the time in the world? At the risk of aligning myself with many a supervillain, I totally get the appeal of eternal life. As long as it's through drinking from a spring, like the Tucks, and not by creating Horcruxes, I mean. I do rather like having a nose. And not murdering. I probably should have said 'not murdering' first.
ANYWAY. There's just so much world to see and do. Think of all the places you could visit. All the books you could finally, finally read. It's impossible to fit everything into one lifetime, so imagine what could be accomplished with infinite lifetimes. Sure, pop culture vampires always seem to grow weary and jaded from being alive for so long. But it's, like, really? You know all there is to know, and there's nothing new that you could possibly learn? Bish, please.
Not to equate quantity of life with quality -- although I certainly hope this group has had plenty of happiness as well as longevity -- but consider the longest living humans, especially the ones born around the turn of the 20th century. Yes, they've seen terrible wars and great tragedies unfold -- and continue to unfold -- in their lifetimes. But also immense change and progress, socially, politically, and technologically. If humanity can advance so much in the past century, what could we do over the next one? The next fifty? We've come a long way, but, as we're reminded time and time again, we still have so much further to go. To be living history is to see how it all plays out. Or, as predicted by a multitude of YA trilogies, if we're doomed to a dystopian future.
On the altruistic side, imagine all the good that immortality could do, too. Like completing dangerous tasks that'd be super risky for someone with a normal lifespan (adamantium skeleton optional). Not to mention the medical implications for finding cures to diseases. Unlocking the key to eternal life should help with that, right?
But immortality doesn't mean immunity to pain. And it definitely doesn't mean people won't try to exploit your condition, much like the Man in the Yellow Suit from Tuck Everlasting tries to do. Becoming a lab rat is certainly no way to spend eternity. (Or any amount of time, for that matter.)
Neither is having to work forever. Short of winning the lottery and making hella smart investments, I literally would not be able to quit my day job. I'd probably switch up careers every handful of decades, but I'd still need money just to live forever. At least vampires can manipulate their way into endless funds; I'd still have to earn my money the old-fashioned way.
On the subject of things that would never end: WAIT, would this mean I'd have to menstruate forever?! No joke, y'all; this might be my breaking point.
But OK -- reproductive system aside, there's an even bigger setback to immortality. Assuming the very worst case -- that no one else I know can be granted eternal life -- I'd have to outlive everyone I love, over and over again. And if I think meeting new friends now is difficult, what's that going to be like ad infinitum?
Then there's the romantical side. Y'all, I'm already a little over the whole dating thing. But to do that forever? And to continually fall in love Wooderson style, i.e. I get older, but they stay the same age? It sounds a little masochistic to condemn yourself to this lonely fate. And even if others could join you: family and friends are one thing, but to choose someone to spend actual forever with? That kind of monogamy is a huge-assed decision. No wonder vampires are perpetually single.
And, really -- do I want to go down with the ship? What's going to happen to my immortal self when Earth ends first? Am I going to be like that poor third astronaut in Gravity, body exposed to the vacuum of outer space, except I'd still be alive and endlessly suffering? (Um -- hello, new nightmare.)
Good thing I'll never have to find out.
So, dear readers: would you drink from the spring for eternal life? What would you do if you could live forever?
The 40th Anniversary Edition of Tuck Everlasting, with a foreword from Gregory Maguire (Wicked), is available now.