[This piece is the epitome of a “work in progress” for me. I will almost certainly revisit and revise it in the future, when I can view it with fresh eyes. In the meantime, I post it now to get it out of my head so that I can attend to other writing. As always, comments are welcome.]
It begins. It ends.
There, in four words, stands one of the fundamental pillars of my life. As long as I keep in mind the knowledge that everything, everything has a beginning and an end, I can start to put my problems, my achievements, all aspects of my life in some sort of proportion. I know that some things are large. I know that some things are small. They’re all finite, and I don’t even have to be able to see the beginnings or ends of things to appreciate that. We’re told that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That’s only half of it; we should also remember that eventually, at some point, a final step will bring the end of that long journey.
To be sure, some measurements will require handling numbers that are big, no matter how one chooses to define the word. How do we do that? In a story by Isaac Asimov that I read long ago, a character states that “The mind cannot conceive of a number greater than five.” The idea is that any larger amount can be represented by a system of numerical notation, and thereby manipulated, calculated, and recorded, but that the mind is not able to “picture” more than a literal handful of fingers. Presumably our ability to abstract far greater numbers is one thing that distinguishes us from other animals, and we treat this ability so casually that we allow flexibility and inexactness just for effect: “There were a million cars on the expressway, and it took ages to get home.” Do you suppose that any other creatures practice hyperbole? For that matter, why would they?
A popular notion for expressing inconceivable time is that of eternity. We sing romantically of eternal love, threaten sinners with eternal damnation, consign the bodies of our dead to eternal rest. It’s a powerful concept. Remember being told in school that any infractions would go onto your permanent record? One pictures a packet of documents in a manila expandable folder, stored safely away but ready to be called up at any moment until the subject’s death, at which point it ends up in St. Peter’s hands.
That pearly segue leads to the concepts of Heaven and Hell, two places where people check in and never check out. Heaven is spacious, relatively cool in temperature (though some northern tribal doctrines paint it as a warm place, for obvious reasons), and blissful, eternally blissful. This seems to go against a tenet of human nature, in which we value more the things we have for only a short time. If you have an unlimited amount of something good, whether it’s money, TV channels, or Paradise, you tend not to appreciate it so much.
That’s why it seems ironic to me that the defining point shared by both Heaven and Hell is their eternal nature. A Heaven that is eternal is unchanging. Something that doesn’t change over time is by definition monotonous, even boring. Whose idea of Heaven is that? More likely, that would describe the concept of Hell, but even there, you arrive at the larger question of purpose. If Hell is so horrendous as the Puritans and Jack Chick tracts claim it to be, why must it be unending? Wouldn’t a century, a single year, or even five minutes of it be enough to punish the sinners? Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov questioned why Hell would exist at all; if one is condemned to Hell for torturing and killing children, he ponders, how does that in any way relieve the suffering of those children? That’s a question for another essay.
Back to Life, which, try as we might to ignore the fact, is finite. This applies to all of it, the good and the bad. Perhaps you’ve heard those other four words on the subject, “This too shall pass.” Supposedly they were spoken as a comfort to some ancient Persian ruler (or to King Solomon, depending on whom you ask). Taken in that sense, it means that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are temporary, and at some point a more natural state of Good Things will be restored. But isn’t that only one half of the equation? If the bad times are temporary, so are the good ones. The cycle continues, sometimes visibly like a pendulum, sometimes less so like the motion of the hour hand.
Is this depressing? That’s up to you. And maybe those four words carry as much weight as the four that began this essay. The good things and the bad things in life tend to be intertwined. You might not like your job, but it does give you money, and that cute person in the next office does make you smile. Doing laundry is a mind-numbing chore, but Linus was not wrong when he said “Security is a drawer full of warm socks.” Yes, the work day ends, and it begins again tomorrow. Yes, the clothes will get dirty and need to be washed again. But yes, you’ll get paid again, and yes, you’ll have clean clothes again. Whether you concentrate on the bright side or the dark side of things, the empty half or the full half, is largely your choice. The magnitude of the joys, and the enormity of the sorrows, are partly the result of how you choose to measure them.
It begins. It ends. Sometimes those words give me solace. Sometimes those words make me wistful. But they provide a good lens for focusing my sense of balance in life. And if putting the good and bad things into perspective is no one’s idea of Heaven, then lacking that perspective is all the Hell anyone would ever need.
Always a pleasure to read. The last paragraph is especially fine.
Just a question: Does it all begin and all end or do only certain forms begin and end? It may be that when the galaxies collide, remnants of everyone who has ever lived on earth will be scattered through the universe, stick together in new combinations or become part of new stars. In billions of years, who knows where, I could be a tiny life form on a planet not yet born. Or maybe a rock. Or maybe a hitchhiker on an asteroid. I wonder.
Thanks, Maureen. My day is now fulfilled.
Your question touches on several that I’ve been chewing on for years, and will lay out in probably a series of future writings. I have no problem with a constantly self-reinventing universe, but folks back in the Bible Belt where I grew up don’t cotton to such notions. When they insist that God had to have made the universe, rather than ask (ask did Carl Sagan and many others) “Then who created God?” I’ve stepped away from that circular argument by wondering, “So, what was God doing all that time before the creation of the universe, and what prompted him to take on a new project?”
On a far less cosmic scale, I’ve been wondering why the word “soul” always seems to have the word “immortal” stuck to it? That’s a mighty big presumption. Your mention of reappearing as a rock (or a hitchhiker on a rock) follow that same train of thought. Expect to see references to Yeats’ spiritus mundi concept, as well as Leo Buscaglia’s The Fall of Freddie the Leaf.
I also plan to take on topics such as hatred, autism, and getting one’s hands dirty. Stay tuned!
Some things are best viewed on a cosmic scale while others are best viewed on a comic scale.
In fact, I’m not certain there is much of a difference between the two when you get right down to it.
(I resisted the obvious pun…you’re welcome.)
“That’s up to you… The magnitude of the joys, and the enormity of the sorrows, are partly the result of how you choose to measure them.”
Love this! I feel this a lot. And I firmly believe that you can change outcomes by changing how you view something, by how you set the intention in your mind. I always tell my kids, “don’t say you can’t do math” (yes, guilty myself as charged here). Instead, try “I’m struggling with this, but I know I can do it, maybe I should ask for some help”.
Its amazing how much life can be a mirror and reflect back what you put out.
*Apologies for focusing on such a small part of the essay, but this point speaks to me!