Nerd Pride Radio

If you were given an envelope with the the time and date of your death inside, would you open it? What about if it was for your spouse or child- and you knew there was no way to change it?

I would absolutely open my envelope. I would want to know how long I have to try and accomplish things in this life. I think this would be different if I had my own children and was able to have my own children. I think then, I wouldn't want to know.

I would not open the envelope for a spouse or child, but I would tell them about it and give them the choice for themselves.

Not sure I could easily cope with that knowledge. Sometimes people have a pretty clear sense of their fates, or the fates of their loved ones, barring unforeseen weird accident, and that's hard enough. There are so many reasons why it would be good to know, but then so many reasons why that might wreck your life. Maybe it if were simply normal to know, and we all knew, every human on earth, then it would be good to know and there would be no vertiginous horror to cope with. Maybe it would be easier than I think, to know.

No.

If I know the date and I fully believe that it is correct and I can do nothing about it, then I will be even less stringent than I already am about taking care of my health, because... why bother if it's not going to change anything?

Because I believe the envelope KNOWS whether or not I will open it (it can see the future after all), and the date written there accounts for whether or not I open it and how that knowledge (or lack thereof) affects my behavior.

I believe I will live longer if I don't open it.

Yes. If I can find out how much longer I need to fake caring about money, I'll be a happy misanthrope.

Self: No, probably not... maybe if I was ill and feared that I might be dying soon and wanted to prepare my family for the inevitable, but I'd probably still not do it and just prepare them as if i was going to die anyway, because I truly believe I won't live a long life anyway. (This has to do with family history...)

Spouse and Child: Absolutely NOT.

My reasoning for the first has a lot to do with my family history. Too long and drawn out...

For the second, it is best illustrated by a book I read recently which illustrated my opinion on the topic. (Not that it formed the opinion, it just echoed it.)

In that book, the main character had the ability to see the age at which someone would die. She didn't particularly like having the ability and avoided "seeing" it if she could. However, she also tended to avoid making close friendships and, especially, dating and falling in love. A large part of the reason for this had to do with the fact that, when she was younger and had less control over the process of finding out that number, she saw her mother's number, and it was THAT year. She spent tons of effort trying to save her mother from her fate, thinking "This is the reason I was given this ability... so I could save her life!" Alas, her mom died in a car accident. There was nothing she could do. Fate had it's way with her.

So, she pretty much lived life as a recluse when she wasn't working or going to school. She worked at a fast food joint, and frequently saw people's numbers as they ordered food that was hastening their deaths, but thought, "Oh well, it's not like there's anything that can be done about it..." She lived a fairly jaded life, avoiding close attachments, and was, for the most part, not happy... Until she almost ran over the new kid in the neighborhood who was chasing a stray dog across the street... She avoided seeing her number, but she couldn't avoid the attraction. She also couldn't avoid the fact that the new girl wanted to be friends. She was new in town, lived right across the street, knew no one else, and, let's face it, was attracted to her as well.

Eventually, she sees this new girl's number and is shocked to see it is her current age. By then it's too late to not be devastated by this information. She's at the very least a good friend, but well on the way to probably being more. She immediately begins to withdraw, all because of the number. Her birthday is at the end of the summer, after all... She can't do that, not again.

In the long run, she gives in to the persistence of the girl next door and they start dating, despite her knowing she is slated to die before the end of the summer, but it totally messes with her head. She tries to avoid dangerous situations, which leads to arguments, and risk taking behavior by her new girlfriend, exactly the opposite of what she wanted.

Suffice it to say, the behavior of the main character in this story is pretty much how I expect I would act if I knew that type of information about my loved ones. I would obsess over it. I would try to protect them to the point that I would drive them nuts. I would try to cheat fate, even if I knew that it wasn't possible. I'd try to find a loophole. Either that or it would make me withdraw and avoid them so I didn't interfere with their lives and mess them up.

[Oh, BTW, in the book, the girlfriend drowns, officially dies, heart stops, flatlines, then is revived after arriving at the emergency room... It seems there are some loopholes in the system. She gets a new number... Kind of a rabbit out of the hat ending, but it was sweet...]

Absolutely.

There's an Owen Meany sense to it, for me. The important thing isn't when, it's how, and preparation can be key.

Owen foresees his end, and spends his whole life preparing to get it right.

The girl in the other book, in my view, does it totally wrong. Reach out over the ledge, make the effort, fall in love, hard. Why the hell else are we here on the planet. Do what you can to make sure folks die fulfilled (or if they're bad, thwarted).