For years, I've treated aging as a disease — something to be beaten. But lately, I keep getting stuck on a different question: what happens to me as a person if we actually win?

There's a strange grief woven into this work. Everyone I love will age. I will age. And honestly, there was always a weird comfort in that shared fate. It made mortality feel less like a threat and more like belonging to the human race.

What do I do with the possibility that I might opt out?

I'm not talking about logistics. I'm talking about guilt. The weight of watching my parents grow older while I potentially buy myself decades. There's an identity question nobody in this field wants to face: if I extend my life by 50 years, am I still the person who started this work, or just something wearing that person's memories?

And here's what keeps me up at night: we might succeed for some people and not others. We might create a world where longevity is a privilege, not a right. I've been in this field long enough to know how innovation typically flows — upward, toward those who can pay.

That's why I keep circling back to what actually matters: what are we building toward? A longer life for the few? Or a different relationship with time for everyone?

I'm still a scientist. I still believe the research matters. But some nights I wonder if the most important work isn't the molecular biology at all — it's deciding what kind of world we want those extra years to exist in.

Maybe the question isn't whether we can reverse aging. It's whether we deserve to.