Is Choosing Cryonics Selfish?

Then

I am thinking about time the way you think about a jar of honey. It sits on the counter, clear and simple, and you wonder how long it lasts, when to use it, if you should seal the lid and save some for later. Time feels like that for me these days—the long shelf life of the days we still have and the uncertain expiry date of the ones to come. I am sixty-one, living in the Pacific Northwest where the rain stays company with every ordinary moment. I am practical, curious, and patient with hard questions. I do not rush to big claims. I watch the day-to-day tremor of choices and how they lift or press down the people around me.

There is a thought that sits with me and does not hurry away: what would it be to choose cryonics, not just for myself but for the people I carry in my life? The question does not come with a loud chorus of certainty. It comes as a quiet, almost polite invitation to consider how a choice about freezing and preserving might ripple through a family, a circle, a community. I have watched aging move through families as a slow, stubborn tide. It asks for aides, for patience, for resources, for doors that stay open a little longer. To decide to pursue cryonics feels like opening a window on time itself, a window that might let more of it in, or might invite trouble. I want to be careful with that doorway.

Personal choice sits at the center of it for me. I want the option to keep living in some form, if the idea of waking up in a future moment makes sense at that time. If this door is kept ajar, it does not erase the present. It does not buy a guarantee either. It simply leaves room for a possibility that feels both intimate and strange: the chance to meet a future version of ourselves, perhaps older or wiser, perhaps just a little more stubborn or hopeful. I value the present life—the routine of small tasks, a friend’s late-night call, the habit of walking a familiar street on a Sunday. But I also know that time is not guaranteed. The present can disappear with a phone call or a sudden ache. The idea of ice and patience, of science trying to bend time’s march, holds a strange appeal without pretending to own the outcome.

If I tell you this is about selfishness, you might wonder what I mean by that word in this fragile context. Selfishness often feels like a loud mistake: a person wanting more time, regardless of others, stepping over lines, ignoring the burdens that fall on the people who watch from the sidelines. Yet there is a different tilt to the question when the subject is cryonics. It is not just a personal wish cast into the air. It touches family, finances, care plans, and the long arc of responsibility that we try to keep steady in families. When I think of my children, siblings, and friends, I hear a chorus of practical questions. Who pays for this? How would it work if I were not able to consent at some future moment? What happens to the care duties I would leave unfinished if I were to vanish without warning? These are not speculative trappings; they are the gravity under the decision.

Resource use matters in plain terms. Cryonics is not cheap in many places, and it is not something a person can quietly opt into and forget about like a new gadget. It is a plan that needs funding, documentation, and a network of people who understand the unknowns. I do not pretend we live in a world with no costs, no tradeoffs, no risk of disappointment. The price tag includes dollars, but it also includes time spent discussing, rechecking, revising, and revisiting the decision as life unfolds. My approach has always been to treat costs as part of the whole, not as a separate burden to carry alone. If I choose this path, I want the decision to be transparent to the people who will walk beside me: my family and those who would be called to remind me what I chose when I am not able to remind myself.

Consent sits at the heart of the matter in a plain, stubborn way. I am mindful of the fact that someone must be able to approve, or at least understand, the plan if I cannot. It is not enough to make a private vow to a future you may never meet. The future is full of new laws, new standards, new questions about identity and memory and what it means to be a person in a different era. In practical terms, that means clear, careful documents and conversations long before a crisis, if possible. It means listening to the voices of those who will bear the weight of the choice when I am gone from the room. Consent, then, is a living agreement, not a sentence carved in stone.

There is social responsibility in this, too, and it feels heavier than any one person can bear easily. If cryonics becomes more common, it shifts the expectations of communities that care for the dying, the dying’s families, and the institutions that hold memory and money. It could alter how we talk about death, how we prepare for it, and how we imagine the future. Some may see it as a hopeful extension of life, a pause rather than an end. Others may see it as a disruption of natural rhythms, a challenge to the ordinary endings that keep society stable. Either way, the move invites a shared reckoning: we all pass something along—time, resources, stories, and values. How we decide to use those things says as much about us as the choice itself.

Uncertainty is the stubborn companion here. I do not pretend to know how this would unfold—whether a wakeful future would greet a revived me with health or with the strange dissonance of waking into a world that once moved without me. That uncertainty is not a parade of doom. It is a chance to acknowledge what we do not know and to prepare with humility. To act with honesty about that uncertainty is to honor the life we have, and the people who share it with us. If I choose cryonics, I am choosing to sit with a future that has not yet learned to answer all questions. If I do not, I am choosing to live fully in the present, with the right to change my mind if new information arrives.

I think about the day-to-day life of a family when a decision of this weight lands on the table. It spreads a kind of quiet vigilance through the household. People look at their own plans, their own dreams, and their own limits. There is sadness in what might be asked of them, but also a possibility: a shared patience for time to explain itself, to reveal new details, to test what it means to keep a promise across decades. My own circle includes elders, siblings, and friends who carry their own histories and their own ways of facing mortality. The choice for cryonics cannot be a private privilege if it imposes hidden costs on others. It has to be a shared, explicit conversation, one that acknowledges the real risk of miscommunication or misaligned expectations.

I do not have a single, neat conclusion to offer you. The urge to see more time in a future world is not the same as a guarantee that this path leads to comfort or success. It is a cautious curiosity that sits beside the weight of responsibility. If I pursue cryonics, I want to do it with eyes wide open: to accept the limits of what is known, to respect the people who would carry the burden if I were not here, and to recognize that every choice becomes a part of the story we tell about who we are and what we value.

There is a trust in this, too—the trust that life’s messiness can coexist with a patient hope. I do not pretend to know what the future holds, only that the present is a place to practice care: care for myself, yes, but also care for the ones who must live with the consequences of my decisions. If I walk toward cryonics, I will walk with a steady gait, asking questions, listening for soft answers, and holding the line between hope and prudence. I want to keep faith with the idea that endings are not always endings, that some doors remain open not to escape life but to honor its complexity.

The core question remains, and it keeps changing shape as I think it through: is choosing cryonics an act of selfishness, or is it a way of tending to time itself, a pause taken with others in mind? I do not pretend I can settle that for everyone. I can only try to answer slowly for myself, with care for the people who would share the road with me, and with a respect for the truth of uncertainty. If we are to measure our choices by the kindness they seed in the living, then perhaps the best we can do is to name the fear, speak the responsibility aloud, and hold our hope gently in our hands.

Then

If you are listening, you may hear the soft hum of a future that could be gentler for some. You may hear caution too, the kind that keeps us honest when the road grows slick. I want to keep listening, and to keep talking with the people I care about, about what time means and what we owe to one another as we wait. The debate over cryonics should not be a contest of who can claim the most certainty. It should be a shared turning of the question toward our common humanity: how we use the time we have, how we care for each other, and how we face the unknown with honesty and ordinary courage.

Now

The present moment asks for plain language and careful listening. We are not required to decide in a hurry. We are not asked to seal every possible future with a vow we may not keep. We are asked to live with openness, to talk with those who matter, to understand the costs, and to be clear about consent. If the future holds a revival for some, I hope it comes with humility and a respect for the lives that made the pause possible. If not, I hope the pause itself remains meaningful—the sign of a life lived with deliberation, care, and love.

Forever

To the readers of this magazine, I offer only this: let the old questions stay with us as we walk into new chapters. The meanings of death, time, and care are not simple, and they should not be forced into tidy answers. Our values deserve room to breathe, to adapt, and to evolve with new knowledge. The conversation itself matters as much as any verdict we might reach. May we keep asking how to balance hope with responsibility.

Then / Now / Forever