From 2020 To Eternity

Eternity can do without us, and we can do without eternity; one could even say that it's vital we do without. In the process of eternal change we've reached yet another crossover point that marks the end of the previous, and the beginning of the new year; with this short post I'd like to wish you all, my dear friends, a new year that's full of what you want it to be full of.

_{Image by Peter-Lomas - source: Pixabay}

The end of a year is something that's so arbitrary, yet still brings about in many of us a need to think things over, to reflect on our lifes and that of our loved ones, often accompanied with promises to do better in the next year, the famous new year resolutions we tend to forget about rather quickly, when the crossover point has passed and we remember how arbitrary that crossover point really is. Our calendar is just an agreement in which we name certain portions of eternal change, so we can find each other in the four dimensions of our reality; we can't just agree to meet at a certain place in space, we need a place in time too. It's not "let's meet at the street-corner" but "let's meet at the street-corner at noon."

Endings are sad and beginnings are joyous. We mourn the departed and rejoice when new life is born. The mourning and the joy feel so profoundly different, yet are so closely attached, for without sadness there's no joy, without darkness no light, and without death no life. This is why I fear the day we may conquer death and manage to become immortal, and why I secretly think we'll never realize that ill begotten dream. For when we conquer death, we conquer life. Life is eternal change, death is eternal stasis. Life without death therefore is forever unchanging, will kill all sense of urgency, will make boredom our steady partner after we've seen everything there is to see. Without death there's no rebirth, without rebirth there's no life. No real life anyway.

To bring the year to a ponderous close, I'll leave you, not with a video, but with a quote from a great fantasy novel I've just finished for the second time, Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is a wonderful story about mages who weave their spells in the language that was used to create the world, and have power over all beings and things by knowing their true names. One of the wizards tries to gain immortality, and upon succeeding all hell breaks loose in Earthsea; wizards forget the ancient language, craftsmen lose all will to craft and life becomes an unchanging drag. The story's protagonist, Sparrowhawk, or Ged, which is his true name, explains in this quote why eternal life is not something to wish for:

"Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?"
_{source: Goodreads}

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