“High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is 100 miles long & 100 miles high & once every 1000 years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away, a single day of eternity will have passed.”

The quote is by Hendrik Willem van Loon, Dutch-American author. He wrote exploration of complex topics for children and laypeople.

I quote it because I heard it paraphrased by Christopher Hitchens in explaining why the ideal of eternal life is such a terrible, terrible concept.

You are incapable of enjoying eternal existence, and any version of you that *is* capable of enjoying eternal existence is not the you that you know.

That is, eternity and personal agency are completely incompatible.

None of us should want to live eternally.

I might like to live 500 years, assuming perfect health & a world that would continue to be habitable and enjoyable at some level.

But there are no preconditions under which I would want to live where a day is measured by the slow erosion of a mountain range by a bird& #39;s beak.