The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The other night as I lay in bed and watched the minutes mercilessly tick by, I began contemplating the incredibly depressing concept of time.
Time is so finite; all things here must end. We stop being an infant, we stop being a child. Seasons change, and thus they end. Years end, months end, days end, minutes and seconds all must end. Even things we do on a regular basis must end. Night continuously cycles into day, and with it goes our sleep, then waking hours end. We eat food, and the calories consumed eventually burn up and we require more.
I read good books, and then they end, I watch good movies, they end too; a perfect song can be three minutes and twenty seconds long and then... even if I hit repeat it's not continuing, it's starting over, and it will end again.
When you become a mother, the instant your child is born she is slipping from you. She draws her first independent breath, and snap! Before you know it she is no longer a new born, no longer a toddler, no longer a teenager, no longer at home.
If this was all I had, if time were my only operational basis and I lived with the thought that I too would one day end, and eventually all memories of me would be gone as well... well I just wouldn't even see the point of living.
The thing that makes time bearable is that it too will end. When I die, that is not the end. My relationships with my family members will never end. When I love someone it stretches on and on into the eternities. This mortal life teaches us all how to say goodbye, because we forgot we did it once before, but at the end of mortality we will remember.
How terribly depressing, how dreadfully sad is time! So finite in its course, so limited in its being! How joyous to awaken and remember that time was fleeting! How glorious when things no longer end!
That, my friends, is why I know there is a God, and why I know that after death I will continue on.
Time is never enough, and, despite what any song may have told you, it is not on your side.
Time teaches us to cherish what is important, and take joy in what does not end when time does.
Time makes me grateful for eternity.
Time is so finite; all things here must end. We stop being an infant, we stop being a child. Seasons change, and thus they end. Years end, months end, days end, minutes and seconds all must end. Even things we do on a regular basis must end. Night continuously cycles into day, and with it goes our sleep, then waking hours end. We eat food, and the calories consumed eventually burn up and we require more.
I read good books, and then they end, I watch good movies, they end too; a perfect song can be three minutes and twenty seconds long and then... even if I hit repeat it's not continuing, it's starting over, and it will end again.
When you become a mother, the instant your child is born she is slipping from you. She draws her first independent breath, and snap! Before you know it she is no longer a new born, no longer a toddler, no longer a teenager, no longer at home.
If this was all I had, if time were my only operational basis and I lived with the thought that I too would one day end, and eventually all memories of me would be gone as well... well I just wouldn't even see the point of living.
The thing that makes time bearable is that it too will end. When I die, that is not the end. My relationships with my family members will never end. When I love someone it stretches on and on into the eternities. This mortal life teaches us all how to say goodbye, because we forgot we did it once before, but at the end of mortality we will remember.
How terribly depressing, how dreadfully sad is time! So finite in its course, so limited in its being! How joyous to awaken and remember that time was fleeting! How glorious when things no longer end!
That, my friends, is why I know there is a God, and why I know that after death I will continue on.
Time is never enough, and, despite what any song may have told you, it is not on your side.
Time teaches us to cherish what is important, and take joy in what does not end when time does.
Time makes me grateful for eternity.
Comments
Your eternal earthly mother.