On eternity

I once met a girl with the word “eternity” tattooed on her body. She was young and so I wondered if this was an ironic play on the Asian characters others get tattooed on themselves. She said simply “it’s just eternity; it means a lot to me”. I chuckled to myself in a kind of self-righteous indignation, and also waiting for her to crack and laugh too and tell me it was just a joke. It wasn't.

Eternity? How does eternity mean a lot to a young girl in their twenties? How does it mean a lot to a girl who I've otherwise only ever heard speak of some or another party, of “having fun”, of fashion, of nothing really meaningful. Really? Eternity? Could she even grasp it as a concept of time-space? Has she ever even dedicated time to the thought of infinity as it applies to the universe we live in, the physics of it. Has she contemplated eternity in the spiritual sense? Or is it more like the scribblings of children “Mary + Joe, 4eva”? Forever? Is it like the way “forever” means to some couples who get married, 'until the divorce'? What the hell does she know about eternity?

And then I thought, hey, what the hell do I know about eternity? And, you know what, I’m actually not that much different. To me eternity is like infinity, a concept that surely somehow exists even though you may not be able to explain it. Eternity exists because even after you die, the world around you keeps going. There were people around you and they saw you die, but they keep on living. After they die too, the world keeps going. There are constants in this world that aren't the lives of human beings, because certainly we’re not eternal. What about the afterlife, that has to be eternal, right? No one knows. There’s religious doctrines out there that say that yes, we are eternal because our spirits are eternal and, like energy, merely change form, but aren't destroyed. And still I say, no one knows. The evidence we have is of this physical world and all this says is that once our body dies, it merely decomposes to its components. End of story; no eternity to any part of us except the subparticles and energy that comprises us and everything around us. There’s infinity because of the expansion of the universe, the ongoing increase of entropy, the extremely small and extremely large processes going on in the universe. All of it, not things a lot of us sit and think about regularly. And certainly not the things that young girl meant by “eternity”.

But what do I know about eternity? I’ll tell you what I don’t know that I think this girl does: hope. Eternity is a wish, a desire for things like love and marriage and health and prosperity to last forever (or until the end of our days). I've lost that hope. I've let myself become too marred by experience, too dark and pessimistic. I came to realise that this young girl probably does have a much broader concept of eternity than I do. She has a child. She understands love far deeper than I do, and with it the concept of never wanting harm to come to your child – of wanting them to live forever, to be eternal. She’s in love. She remains passionate with her lover, he still makes her smile, surprises her in sweet and charming ways, they still want to impress each other. She enjoys life, looks forward to things, isn't accepting the 9-5 job as her life; her life is at home, and on the weekends, and every moment she can find in which to smile in. These are the things she hopes will last forever. She approaches life with such passion, embracing everything as if it were going to and hoping it will last for all eternity.

What are the things I wish would last for all eternity? These are the things I should focus on. With insight must come responsibility.

Impressive