I don’t know how I’d respond if I was childless. But I want to see the Firebug grow up, and see as much of his adult life unfold as I can.
100 years is certainly more than my natural life expectancy. I’ll take it.
If I took the 25 year cycle option, if I understand the OP correctly, I’d spend my remaining 75 years trapped in the 25 years after my birth. I really don’t want to be a child prodigy in the late 1950s three times. There are other drawbacks, but doing a triple repeat of the mid-1950s to late 1970s just doesn’t strike me as great fun.
Make that 25 year cycle to pop into being somehow adopted by nice folks at age 14-16 and run a 25 year cycle from there…you would probably have ALOT more takers.
How much fun would that be…able to show discipline and responsibility, confidence, attempts at intimidation or bullying by school administration met with a mind who knows his rights, the opposite sex is not some exotic mystery, you would be the guy in school who has girls fighting over you because you know just what to say and do. The person who seems to be the ultimate old soul, who can fix anything, deal with any crisis, weather any storm, and be 15…
You will marry the the most awesome person from your high school, have a couple kids early, successfully juggle school, work and family, and die not long after seeing them graduate from college having served as a fabulous example to them to emulate.
If I did the 25 year cycle option, though, I’d spend the next 10 days (a) reviewing a bunch of proofs in my mathematical field of study that I’m kinda rusty on, so I can, as a 3 year old, be the first one to prove some pretty cool theorems, and (b) reviewing the ups and downs of a number of stocks of the era, so that I can make the jump from mathematically gifted child prodigy to stock-market genius child prodigy, so that I can be rich by my pre-teen years each time.
Thing is, you buried the cash in an ammo box a couple miles south of Aberdeen SD, on that gravel road hat runs into the cornfield. Now you new cycle starts in Borneo, you are a child running through the tropical jungle with no practical way to get to your money, and by the time you are old enough to try, you have all but forgotten how to speak English. This is the kind of thing Djinns do, they ignore your expectations.
I chose the 100 year package - but to be clear - I would expect to be relatively healthy for those years - if I were to be sick in bed for 20 - 30 of those years, I would choose death instead.
I’ll take the painful, horrifying death. I’m already over 50 and have an unfortunately clear understanding of what the downhill slope ahead looks like. Getting to experience more of that than I’m probably allotted is not a delightful prospect.
The 4 x 25 option would suck equally, because I would have to die just when I reached the peak of health over and over again and never get to enjoy any of the material benefits of mature adulthood. I also wouldn’t get to raise a child or children, and that would be one of the only reasons I’d want to have a new or different life. It would be great to get to live my youth over with my current level of knowledge, but only if I could go on and see what kind of adult I could make of myself given those circumstances.
There’s a novel about it, although the main character reincarnates as an 18 year old.
There’s another character who reincarnates at a slightly younger age:
[QUote=Replay, by Ken Grimwood]
“The second time I died,” Pamela began, "I was more infuriated than anything else. As soon as I came
to, in my parents’ house, fourteen years old again, I knew exactly what was happening, if not why. And I
just wanted to smash something. I wanted to scream with rage, not fear. The way you said you felt on
your third … replay. It all seemed such a waste: medical school, the hospital, all the children I had
treated … pointless, all of it.
"I became extremely rebellious, vicious, even, with my family. I’d spent more years as an adult than
my mother and father put together, had been married twice, had a career as a physician. And here I was
legally a child, with no rights or options whatsoever. I stole some money from my parents, ran away from
home. But it was dreadful—nobody would rent me an apartment, I couldn’t get a job … There’s nothing
a girl that age can do on her own, other than go on the streets, and I wasn’t about to put myself through
that kind of hell. So I crawled back to Westport, devastated, incredibly alone. Went back to school,
despising every moment of it, flunking half my classes because I just couldn’t stand to memorize the same
damned algebra formulas for the third time.
My original idea for the 25 year cycle is that it will be the same life. Same parents, same birthday, same location. Exactly the same as the one you had. But now I’ve read your comments, I think it would be a bit more appealing if I add some benefits in the package.
So now in the 25 year cycle, you’ll get to choose where and whom to be born. You will also get to choose whether to repeat your life (if you were born in June 7, 1980, you will be born again on the same date) or continue with your present time (if you die today, you will be born tomorrow). Plus during these rebirths you’ll get to choose whether to skip the being a baby part or not. You will still die at 25 though.
As I’m pretty close to 70 now, I will jump on the 25 option.
Especially knowing what I know now. Although I agree that grammar school might be boring, just think of the opportunities to describe children’s social habits…and I get to play marbles at recess!
And I would have the wisdom to make better choices (hear that, Pandora?) and accumulate a vast amount of knowledge and experience,
Plus, I think I could figure out a way to make money and then inherit it somehow, becoming a very rich 21 year old.
I’ve already experienced the aging process to the extent that I would rather be young with all its drawbacks than live another 30 years to 100. Youth is hard to beat…remember that.
It’s a six month old. The point is, the signs of intelligence come before you’d have any chance of being thought of as mentally ill. Once they know you’re intelligent enough to be that age, why would they think you were mentally ill?
The real reason you have to worry about pretending is so that you won’t be studied as some sort of freak. But mentally ill? Hardly.
There’s not even a dilemma here. For me, life didn’t really start to get good until I was on my own. Who wants to be dependent on a parent all over again? Who wants to go through puberty 4 times? Who wants to be 25, 50, and 75 years younger than their friends?
Secondly, I see that there’s no assurance that you’d be born immediately consecutive to dying. So I could live to 25 in 4 different centuries.
You read a lot of science fiction, don’t you?
Maybe_maybe_ if you were reborn into a technologically advanced liberal society, you might be perceived as a prodigy. You might even find someone, most likely a woo-woo, ready to believe you are the result of reincarnation. In most places, especially if you are born into a different culture with a language barrier, you are going to be nothing but a weird, off-putting, willful child.
I’d pick the 25-year cycles. Each cycle I could completely reinvent myself. With the incredibly active mind of an infant coupled with an adult’s motivation, and headstart knowledge, I could be an absolute master of numerous fields each time. </mwahahahaha>
Compare that to being an average schmoe, basically stuck doing one thing (I’ve tried to learn other skills as an adult, but it takes fracking ages) with 2/3rds of my lifespan probably spent with, I dunno, back pain or whatever…No contest.