If you'd stay, I'd subtract Twenty years from my life
For some reason these lines from Billy Vera's song "At This Moment" have been running through my head recently. Sometimes I like to think about hypotheticals, such as, "Would someone really give up 20 years of his life for a romantic interest?"
I'm not a good candidate for this question, for two reasons. One, I am happily married; and two, I am over 50, so losing 20 years off my life seems pretty dire at this point. Let's assume, then, that we are dealing with a 20-something person who is desperately in love and appears not likely to win their beloved's heart. Even in those circumstances, would you do it?
At other times, I have used speculative questions like this to wonder how a person would assess the reality of the offer. For example, if someone offered to buy your soul for $1 million, would you accept? You probably would not think that this person could literally buy your soul even if he wanted to, but would you take a chance anyway?
In this case, however, I am more concerned with the balance of the offer: would you trade 20 years of your life for a romantic partner? So let's assume that the genie making this proposal is entirely credible: you believe he can do what he says, your only question is whether you want to accept.
Even granted that you believe the genie has this power, exactly what is he proposing? One of the recurring themes of wish-granting is the wisher getting what he asks for in a literal sense, but not getting what he really wants (e.g., this episode of The Twilight Zone). But you don't have to assume that the genie is trying to trick you to worry about this, especially when you're dealing with human behaviour. What exactly are you wishing for? Do you want this person to say yes right now? That's fine, but what if they change their mind later? Do you want this person to be completely devoted to you for the rest of your life? That's more in line with what you were probably thinking, but still...might it not become a little tiresome for you? Sure, you love this person now, but how will you feel in a year or five years? And will the fact that this person is automatically and unconditionally yours make him or her seem less desirable (as I feel it is bound to do)? You could, of course, separate from this person later if you wished, but how would you feel having forced this person to love only you, and then abandoning him or her for someone else? Surely you would have at least some guilt over that.
Maybe there's a way around even that problem. Maybe you can get the genie to make this other person love you as long as you love him or her. That should straighten out the problem of your changing your mind later. But what exactly is your love? I'm sure "love" is a meaningful emotion, but when it comes to enforcing wishes, it is a little difficult to define. Is it a binary? Do you love this person or not? Or is it a sliding scale, so that the more you love this person, the more he or she loves you? In the latter case, would you wonder at all times whether he or she was loving you as much as you want? Would you actually try to love the person more, in order that you might be more loved? And how would it feel having to earn love one quantum at a time, even if you are paying for it in the same coin? It actually seems like a pretty good situation in general, trying to love someone more so that they will love you back; but, once you tie it to a enforceable rule, it seems a lot less heartwarming and a lot more transactional.
I haven't even gotten into the question of giving up 20 years of your life. Twenty sounds like a lot to me. For some reason, I think of ten as the standard. I imagine the last ten years of a person's life to be full of a lot of pain and inconveniences, so that maybe you wouldn't miss those years as much as ten years when you were younger. The length of time is certainly variable, and I would guess that a lot of people are fine for seven, eight, or even nine of their last ten years. Or, you might have been destined to die suddenly at age 50, and you are actually dooming yourself to miss some of the prime years of your life -- most of them, if you agreed to exchange twenty years for your sweetheart. Given that the death is a future cost and the benefit of love is immediate, I expect that people would generally pay less attention to the cost than to the benefit. If it were a real scenario, we would include the chance that we might never have to pay; for example, if the genie were instead a business that we owed, maybe the business would go bankrupt in the meantime. And the mode of death being undetermined, we might think we could avoid it by leading a very healthy lifestyle and avoiding risky activities. These wouldn't help with a genie, presumably, but you'd try to come up with some rationalization of how the genie was going to make you die, some comparison to a real-life phenomenon, and work with that.
I don't have any conclusion to this thought experiment (since conclusions aren't really the point of them), but I'm glad I was never forced to make this choice.
I'm not a good candidate for this question, for two reasons. One, I am happily married; and two, I am over 50, so losing 20 years off my life seems pretty dire at this point. Let's assume, then, that we are dealing with a 20-something person who is desperately in love and appears not likely to win their beloved's heart. Even in those circumstances, would you do it?
At other times, I have used speculative questions like this to wonder how a person would assess the reality of the offer. For example, if someone offered to buy your soul for $1 million, would you accept? You probably would not think that this person could literally buy your soul even if he wanted to, but would you take a chance anyway?
In this case, however, I am more concerned with the balance of the offer: would you trade 20 years of your life for a romantic partner? So let's assume that the genie making this proposal is entirely credible: you believe he can do what he says, your only question is whether you want to accept.
Even granted that you believe the genie has this power, exactly what is he proposing? One of the recurring themes of wish-granting is the wisher getting what he asks for in a literal sense, but not getting what he really wants (e.g., this episode of The Twilight Zone). But you don't have to assume that the genie is trying to trick you to worry about this, especially when you're dealing with human behaviour. What exactly are you wishing for? Do you want this person to say yes right now? That's fine, but what if they change their mind later? Do you want this person to be completely devoted to you for the rest of your life? That's more in line with what you were probably thinking, but still...might it not become a little tiresome for you? Sure, you love this person now, but how will you feel in a year or five years? And will the fact that this person is automatically and unconditionally yours make him or her seem less desirable (as I feel it is bound to do)? You could, of course, separate from this person later if you wished, but how would you feel having forced this person to love only you, and then abandoning him or her for someone else? Surely you would have at least some guilt over that.
Maybe there's a way around even that problem. Maybe you can get the genie to make this other person love you as long as you love him or her. That should straighten out the problem of your changing your mind later. But what exactly is your love? I'm sure "love" is a meaningful emotion, but when it comes to enforcing wishes, it is a little difficult to define. Is it a binary? Do you love this person or not? Or is it a sliding scale, so that the more you love this person, the more he or she loves you? In the latter case, would you wonder at all times whether he or she was loving you as much as you want? Would you actually try to love the person more, in order that you might be more loved? And how would it feel having to earn love one quantum at a time, even if you are paying for it in the same coin? It actually seems like a pretty good situation in general, trying to love someone more so that they will love you back; but, once you tie it to a enforceable rule, it seems a lot less heartwarming and a lot more transactional.
I haven't even gotten into the question of giving up 20 years of your life. Twenty sounds like a lot to me. For some reason, I think of ten as the standard. I imagine the last ten years of a person's life to be full of a lot of pain and inconveniences, so that maybe you wouldn't miss those years as much as ten years when you were younger. The length of time is certainly variable, and I would guess that a lot of people are fine for seven, eight, or even nine of their last ten years. Or, you might have been destined to die suddenly at age 50, and you are actually dooming yourself to miss some of the prime years of your life -- most of them, if you agreed to exchange twenty years for your sweetheart. Given that the death is a future cost and the benefit of love is immediate, I expect that people would generally pay less attention to the cost than to the benefit. If it were a real scenario, we would include the chance that we might never have to pay; for example, if the genie were instead a business that we owed, maybe the business would go bankrupt in the meantime. And the mode of death being undetermined, we might think we could avoid it by leading a very healthy lifestyle and avoiding risky activities. These wouldn't help with a genie, presumably, but you'd try to come up with some rationalization of how the genie was going to make you die, some comparison to a real-life phenomenon, and work with that.
I don't have any conclusion to this thought experiment (since conclusions aren't really the point of them), but I'm glad I was never forced to make this choice.
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