Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.6

Death is such as generation is, a mystery of nature, a composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same, and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to the nature of a reasonable animal, and not contrary to the reason of our constitution.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr Long)

In my teenage years, I admired all sorts of books, films, and music that may now seem horribly cheesy. You will have to forgive my nostalgia for a moment, but even the things from way back then can still be of great use to me now, accompanied with both a wry smile and a slow shake of the head.

The movie Highlander, directed by Russell Mulcahy, starring the inimitable Christopher Lambert and the legendary Sean Connery, was one of those guilty pleasures. It later spawned a whole franchise, but I remain convinced there should have been only one. As corny and over-the-top as the film sometimes was, there were parts that genuinely made me think. The brilliant soundtrack by Queen certainly didn’t hurt. Who knows what effect it would have had on me if my favorite band, Marillion, had done the music, as was originally planned?

Few things could draw the attention of an adolescent male, already in love with Tolkien, Herbert, Howard, and Zelazny, as the premise that a breed of Immortals had been hidden throughout human history, fighting one another across the ages for some mysterious Prize.

From the dawn of time we came, moving silently down through the centuries. Living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the Gathering, when the few who remain will battle to the last. No one has ever known we were among you . . . until now.

Sweet. What a wonderful gift it must be to be granted immortality, to never age, to never tire or grow ill, to constantly gain in knowledge, skill, and power, to have no limit of time to do what I might desire. I would only die if my head came from my body, and if I did that to the other Immortals before they did it to me, I would become like a god. As one of the songs by Queen said:

Here we are, born to be kings.

We're the princes of the Universe.

But with that immediate cool factor passing to the side, what seems so right becomes so wrong. The blessing of immortality is actually a curse. As the Universe changes, I remain the same. As other things are born, grow, and die, I am nothing but a static fixture. I can only sit there and watch others live their lives with purpose, struggle, risk, loss and gain, sadness and joy, while my own life is a husk. There is nothing I can love, nothing I can aim for, because my own permanence stands within the impermanence of my surroundings. It actually ends up sounding like a living Hell.

Another song by Queen ended up having it right:

Who wants to live forever?

Forever is our today.

Beginnings, middles, and ends are at the very heart of the flow of Nature. That’s the deal, and if I try to outrun death, I will find myself regretting it. 
 

It was nicely appropriate when the nature of The Prize is revealed at the end of the film. I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it, but there are two parts to it. Each is fitting, and each is quite Stoic. There is the unity of all things, and there is the passing of all things.

Don’t lose your head.

Written in 6/2005