Dreams/Eternity

Yesterday night I dreamt.

I dreamt I drove a car. Again.
I dreamt about the end of the world. Again.

If anyone asks if I have recurring dreams, I'd say yes.
I always dream about large surreal landscapes.
I always dream about driving.
and I always dream about the end of the world.

It is amazing how realistic things feel in dreams. So I felt the feeling one should feel about the world ending. Thus I woke up, and then I pondered.

I realise things aren't eternal. If you think about it, everyone will die one day. So then, what is the point?

We slave the day away. We work hard, we plow the fields, hoping against hope to sow that little seed. Technology advances, new ideas are conceptualised, old ideas are debunked. Society grows and nations collide - some wanting to eradicated each other, some forming an alliance. Then man grow old and dies. The next generation succeeds in place of the old, and then they die too.

Even so, society is obsessed with eternity. Steady progress is being made in discovering that elusive elixir to longevity. Cryogenics, eugenics, substitution of the human brain for a microchip - these are but some of the ways we think will bestow upon us time here that will never end.

But truly, how long is an eternity? Already the human mind has problems grasping the meaning of an infinite number. A googol, or even a googolplex - One already have problems visualisation the magnitude of that number. But that isn't eternity. No, it doesn't even come close. Since the dawn of the first man - our time here has nary a register in the timeline of the universe. Thus far, our time here can truly be said to be a fleeting moment in the grand scheme of the universe. No, fleeting won't be appropriate. Fleeting would still describe too long a time.

Yet, here we are, dreaming grandiose dreams of infinity, when we cannot yet comprehend the implications of eternity. Science fiction stories tend to take us huge amounts of years into our future. But what then, of billions of years ahead? Is there a story that depicts humanity down the path of a billion years later?

To paraphrase the adage, that there is no limit to the imagination of man. Oh, I beg to differ. Infinity stands against it. Then to paraphrase another adage, whatever has a beginning has to have an end.

Perhaps, it is simply that our minds are not yet evolved to understand this concept of eternity. Already, so many stories have thought up of man evolving into one shared Existence. An Existence without a physical being. An Existence that feels no pain, no love, no hate, no loneliness, no hunger. We would simply possess a collective existential conscious, floating through the eons.

There exists a philosophical school of thought about eternal recurrence, where the universe is thought to have recurred, and will continue to recur in a similar form for an infinite number of times. The symbol of it being the Ouroboros, a snake biting upon its own tail, symbolising the recreation of itself. Then what boggles the mind, and begs the question is, if eternity has always existed, when then, was the beginning?

Ahhh.

However, things that lasts for a little while tend to possess a great amount of beauty. That ephemeral sunset/sunrise. The quick burst of fireworks amidst the dark night sky. That short feeling of being truly happy and touched when someone you love pleasantly surprised you.

And surely, the human life exists - for a lack of an exact descriptive word - for but a fleeting moment. Doesn't it then, possess a great amount of beauty as well? Like that old rock-n-roll saying,

"Let's burn out, rather than fade away."

Even if the end comes tomorrow, your lives have already been beautiful.