Immortality

Immortality

Abigail Adegbiji • June 6, 2026

Death terrifies me. I know that I will die and at times that certainty can even be comforting. What truly distresses me is the thought that I will be forgotten and that my efforts and actions won’t matter. There is certainly value in being privileged to experience my life and live it to the fullest, but I find myself needing an overarching meaning. I know I have to die, but I want to matter.

The most obvious way to matter is notoriety. If I amass enough influence, status or even infamy, society will notice my absence. But fame is fleeting. The news and buzz will cycle on to the next star, and my name will become, at best, a footnote.

A more intimate alternative is lineage. Through children I would live on physically and in memory. My descendants would carry my stories and my DNA forward. But this has limits. I don’t remember anything about my great-great-great-great-great grandmother. I only carry a small fraction of her genes, a fraction that halves every generation. Although having children is a deeply rewarding way to live, it’s not the best mechanism for immortality.

True immortality comes from entrenching ideas. People come and go, nations rise and fall, and the universe changes of its own accord. Ideas however, can evolve without dying. They move from mind to mind, inspiring, educating, and changing the way we behave on an individual and collective level. While products, companies and foundations are great ways to carry ideas forward, scientific research does this in its purest form.

Which is why I find the idea of being a scientist so attractive. I want to publish my ideas and provide proofs of concept. I want to teach what I know and and engage in a conversation with future people I will never meet. Of course the irony is that science strips the individual from the result, and that my ideas are bound to be discredited and superseded at some point.

Yet that is enough for me. If one day I only exist as a citation in an archive, that is enough. If my name vanishes completely but traces of my ideas still shape how people think, that is enough. Beneath all the passion and curiosity, this desperately selfish desire guides my actions. I want to be a permanent part of the human story. I want to be immortal.