Pardon me for getting a bit metaphysical. This is what happens when things aren't going quite the way I had hoped.
My brain wanders.
And this time, it wandered off into the Deep End of the Pool.
Thinking of Nothingness.
More specifically, Not Being.
It's kind of weird to imagine not being. Kind of scary.
It's not a novel concept; it's highly probable that you've thought of it, too. It goes along with the opposite concept of Always-Being, which is the belief in eternal life, living forever and ever, never ending, never growing, never aging (and, depending on your particular brand of theology, never changing).
Those are both hard concepts to grasp. Perhaps that is why most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about them. If you think about them too long and too deep, it could seriously impair your ability to deal with the here and now.
But every once in a while, my brain goes into this really intense what-if mode, and suddenly I'm confronted with the reality of The End. We all know it could happen at any time; we see examples of that all the time. For some, it ends suddenly, without warning; for others, it announces itself well in advance.
For many of us raised in Christian homes, we take for granted that we will transported instantaneously from one existence to another: from earthly toil into heavenly rest; from pain and misery into continual joy. For some reason, although it should be a comforting thought, it has always terrified me, this concept of being forever, time without end.
Notwithstanding the Biblical promises of love, joy, peace, and everlasting happiness in the presence of God, my primitive brain can't handle the thought of going on and on, forever and ever, amen. Because there really isn't a going "on" if there is no "time". There is just the "being". But what is it like to "be" when there is no "time", which implies there is no moment-by-moment progression of activities, no clock ticking, no physical manifestation of interaction with a physical universe?
My imagination is too limited to consider it. My sole experience has been with the sequential passage of time, one moment transitioning to the next with accompanying changes to either myself of the environment around me. What would it mean to exist on a plane where there was no such thing as the transition from one physical state to another? What would it mean from the aspect of thought? How does the 'mind' experience a new thought or a change in intention when there is no such thing as 'before' or 'after'?
It would mean that your existence here on Earth was neither in the past nor in the future, nor even in the present, because this short episode of Time and Creation and Existence did not 'happen' nor will it 'happen' but it is. Or is it?
My brain is hurting now, just attempting to think about these things.
As a person who enjoys the subject of history, and is constantly rewriting it (both in the general sense and in the personal sense), my greatest comfort comes from the (admittedly feeble) thought of enduring eternity by being granted the ability to go back through my own life and re-do any and every moment, only this time, making subtle changes here and there to see what different paths my life may have taken. To correct old mistakes. To try to make it turn out better. To avoid the events or decisions which have had negative effects.
But the only way that would be of any use to me, was if I could also remember my previous experience so as to have something to compare it to. But that would only go so far, because once I wander off the path in which my 'original' life was lived, my parallel lives would diverge so much that comparisons would be rather pointless.
So say that I live a second lifetime, and then a third and a fourth, and so on and so on. Even were I to have enough lives to redo every second of my original life, that would not even begin to touch the edge of the concept of Eternity.
Perhaps then I would be granted the ability to experience someone else's life, and all the combinations and permutations thereof, for every singe person who has ever lived - or will ever live - throughout all of history. Imagine! Knowing what it would be like to actually be Abraham or Moses or Elijah - or some nameless soldier who died in the unremembered battle between some obscure tribe of people who lived in some long-forgotten village three or four millenia ago.
Even though I lived through the eyes of all the people who had ever existed, and then gone back and re-lived their lives in order to experience all the possible outcomes of every decision of every second of their lives, at the end of all that, I would not even begin to experience Eternity.
Because, by definition, Eternity never ends.
So after experiencing all those lives multiple times, all the joys and pains and triumphs and tragedies, perhaps I would be allowed to experience the unrealized future, the dreams which were unfulfilled in our own lifetimes, the imagined peoples who moved out into the vastness of space to explore the galaxy and the universe.
Even after all that, Eternity would not have begun.
Because Eternity has no beginning, and no end. It merely is.
And I would be.
But what would that mean? What is it like, to be? Or not to be?
That is the question.
My brain wanders.
And this time, it wandered off into the Deep End of the Pool.
Thinking of Nothingness.
More specifically, Not Being.
It's kind of weird to imagine not being. Kind of scary.
It's not a novel concept; it's highly probable that you've thought of it, too. It goes along with the opposite concept of Always-Being, which is the belief in eternal life, living forever and ever, never ending, never growing, never aging (and, depending on your particular brand of theology, never changing).
Those are both hard concepts to grasp. Perhaps that is why most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about them. If you think about them too long and too deep, it could seriously impair your ability to deal with the here and now.
But every once in a while, my brain goes into this really intense what-if mode, and suddenly I'm confronted with the reality of The End. We all know it could happen at any time; we see examples of that all the time. For some, it ends suddenly, without warning; for others, it announces itself well in advance.
For many of us raised in Christian homes, we take for granted that we will transported instantaneously from one existence to another: from earthly toil into heavenly rest; from pain and misery into continual joy. For some reason, although it should be a comforting thought, it has always terrified me, this concept of being forever, time without end.
Notwithstanding the Biblical promises of love, joy, peace, and everlasting happiness in the presence of God, my primitive brain can't handle the thought of going on and on, forever and ever, amen. Because there really isn't a going "on" if there is no "time". There is just the "being". But what is it like to "be" when there is no "time", which implies there is no moment-by-moment progression of activities, no clock ticking, no physical manifestation of interaction with a physical universe?
My imagination is too limited to consider it. My sole experience has been with the sequential passage of time, one moment transitioning to the next with accompanying changes to either myself of the environment around me. What would it mean to exist on a plane where there was no such thing as the transition from one physical state to another? What would it mean from the aspect of thought? How does the 'mind' experience a new thought or a change in intention when there is no such thing as 'before' or 'after'?
It would mean that your existence here on Earth was neither in the past nor in the future, nor even in the present, because this short episode of Time and Creation and Existence did not 'happen' nor will it 'happen' but it is. Or is it?
My brain is hurting now, just attempting to think about these things.
As a person who enjoys the subject of history, and is constantly rewriting it (both in the general sense and in the personal sense), my greatest comfort comes from the (admittedly feeble) thought of enduring eternity by being granted the ability to go back through my own life and re-do any and every moment, only this time, making subtle changes here and there to see what different paths my life may have taken. To correct old mistakes. To try to make it turn out better. To avoid the events or decisions which have had negative effects.
But the only way that would be of any use to me, was if I could also remember my previous experience so as to have something to compare it to. But that would only go so far, because once I wander off the path in which my 'original' life was lived, my parallel lives would diverge so much that comparisons would be rather pointless.
So say that I live a second lifetime, and then a third and a fourth, and so on and so on. Even were I to have enough lives to redo every second of my original life, that would not even begin to touch the edge of the concept of Eternity.
Perhaps then I would be granted the ability to experience someone else's life, and all the combinations and permutations thereof, for every singe person who has ever lived - or will ever live - throughout all of history. Imagine! Knowing what it would be like to actually be Abraham or Moses or Elijah - or some nameless soldier who died in the unremembered battle between some obscure tribe of people who lived in some long-forgotten village three or four millenia ago.
Even though I lived through the eyes of all the people who had ever existed, and then gone back and re-lived their lives in order to experience all the possible outcomes of every decision of every second of their lives, at the end of all that, I would not even begin to experience Eternity.
Because, by definition, Eternity never ends.
So after experiencing all those lives multiple times, all the joys and pains and triumphs and tragedies, perhaps I would be allowed to experience the unrealized future, the dreams which were unfulfilled in our own lifetimes, the imagined peoples who moved out into the vastness of space to explore the galaxy and the universe.
Even after all that, Eternity would not have begun.
Because Eternity has no beginning, and no end. It merely is.
And I would be.
But what would that mean? What is it like, to be? Or not to be?
That is the question.
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