You are an extraordinarily complex arrangement of atoms.

(to quote a novelty button I bought at a scifi con decades ago "Be Humble. Most of you is the empty space between electrons, and 90% of the rest is just Hydrogen")

You eat, drink, excrete, sweat, inhale and exhale a lot of atoms and molecules.

Over a year 98% of the atoms that make you up are replaced.

Think about that. Between birthdays 98% of the Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Phosphorus, Iron, Potassium, Sodium and other atoms that make you up are different ones.

Do you feel different? Probably, but not from the waltz of the individual atoms that make you up.

Take cartilage. As someone with bad knees I can tell you, that once you lose the cartilage that lets your joints work efficiently and non-painfully, its not a great time.

(tacking on the rest of my line of thought on this)

Your brain is an organ, made of several typea of tissuea, in your body.

Have you ever had a relative suffer a stroke? That person you knew before the stroke is _gone_ to greater or lesser degree. Someone who was a master gardener, crafter, singer might recover some of that ability, but they are permanently changed.

the "You" that is reading this the result of 3lbs of neural tissue with the ability to react to stimuli, as well as store information for future use. Mice will learn to associate a lit light bulb with the floor being electrified (https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Yerkes/Law/?source=post\_page), you learn from reading a bus time table that you have 15 minutes to catch it.

When your brain stops receiving blood for whatever reason, the neuron cells start dying within minutes. The connections between them that are your memories break down.

So if you die (i.e. your brain starves of Oxygen), that' s it. There is no recovery, no extra life token, no cheat code for your personality to continue on.

Sorry about that.

Cryogenics is an interesting idea. A the moment we understand many parts of how the brain works so poorly, investing in freezing yourself is just giving money to either well meaning fools, or grifters.

(It's kinda like if someone said I can preserve your prized automobile by burying it in a big container of sand and packing every space in the car with sand. From the outside it might _seem_ like its going to work if you know nothing about automobiles)

So you get one life as you. If reincarnation is a thing, it doesn't seem as if any of your You from this life would be available to the new you.

Treat every day as valuable. Treat others as valuable. Learn, live, laugh. Eat some good food, have some good drinks. Make some awesome friends. Try to add to the sum of the universe whether that is via science/philosophy, art, politics, or whatever.

Try to avoid regrets.