Eternity only begins, and I had never thought of it in that light. There are so many terms and understandings that we take at face value that on many occasions we forget what they originally meant. Sometimes all it takes is approaching the subject from another angle to realize that one has fallen into this trap and that the ideas we see are not as they appear under a new light. A few days ago I sat studying with a wandering mind when the idea "eternity only begins" materialized from my haphazard thoughts. The words were so simple and far from profound that I was taken aback when I truly attempted to understand what they meant-- that against the infinite backdrop of time and the far reaching grasp of eternity, we sit only at the very beginning of all that is. In juxtaposition to the boundless span of all that will occur, what has occurred and is occurring is only the first drop of many that will form an ocean. See, I had always viewed the idea of eternity in regard to its reach; I had only contemplated the end of the infinite, and by doing so failed to recognize we are and can only be at the beginning. I stand today at the very infancy of time because, oddly enough, that is the only place possible. To attempt to exist in the middle of eternity would essentially be to exist an infinity from now. But none of this is important.
What drove me to write these words was not the idea of eternity but the idea behind the idea. How many misconceptions and misunderstandings ignorantly flaw my understanding of the world? How many whites do I perceive as black? How many ups are down? How many wrongs are right? Most likely too many to know. Since my enlightenment on eternity, however, I have at least discovered one. Ironically it's not necessarily something I've never realized, but an idea I've simply never realized applied to myself. I have at least once before in these writings discussed the idea of contrast. Per my prior words, I described contrast as a driving force behind mankind. Contrast gives life to world, quite literally. Were there no contrast between life and death, that is to say no death at all, what would be the worth of life? Nothing. To again quote Ray Kurzweil:
“Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.”
Contrast defines this world. This is a profound idea, but it is not the point I wish to make. What I want to address are the posts that followed that post. For months I wrote about hope, hopelessness, devastation, acceptance, and disparity. I characterized my own feelings as the descent into darkness against the impossible ascension. But having done so, now I find myself the hypocrite arguing the world is too dark but the sun too bright. I defined the world in the terms of contrast, championing the disparity of all and none, and then proceeded to define my own situation in a vacuum. If life is contrast and contrast is life, does it then not make sense to embrace, or at the very least accept, the other edge of the sword? How can I assault the tears of hopelessness that define the tears of joy? How can I condemn the dark that gives life to the light? It's an idea my mind accepts much easier than does my heart, but it's one the latter cannot ignore. The world can be a very dark place. Right now the world is a very dark. We cannot, however, appreciate the air we breath until we know what it is to suffocate. We can not appreciate the beating heart until it stops. We cannot understand what it means "to be" without first suffering those slings and arrows.
It's easy to forget the importance of contrast, just as it is easy to erroneously expect our lives to be both lopsided and worthwhile. Many people spend an eternity attempting to understand life in this light.
Sometimes all it takes is understanding eternity in a new light.
5/21/11
5/15/11
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