Sunday 31 March 2002

Pic of the day: Eternity ... is having places to go and time enough to go there without hurry. You can find eternity in your daily life. (But I found this picture in Dark Age of Camelot. The bright point near the middle is my character's helmet.)

Forever is a long time

Today is Easter Sunday. I guess most of you know that Christianity is founded on the belief that one such day, more than 1900 years ago, God raised a man from the grave, never to die again. And because of this, we also hope to live forever ...

"Hey, what do you mean, hope? Would you really want to live forever?"
"Sure thing. Dying sucks! You have to leave everything and everyone and disappear into the darkness. No more singing and dancing, no more love, no more computer games, no more nothing. Who would want to die if they could avoid it?"
"No more pain, no more loneliness, no more rejection, no more boredom. Is death really so bad, except that we are scared of the unknown?"
"Well, in the new improved version of Eternal Life, there is no pain anyway. Only the good stuff."
"Well, that makes it even worse! You'll be bored to death, but unable to die! There will be no danger, so you can feel no thrill. There will be no pain, so you'll soon take pleasure for granted. There will be no work to do, for nothing can be improved when it's already perfect. You will just be walking aimlessly up and down your streets of gold like some non-player character in a computer game. What kind of life is that? You will be bored out of your skull after a few days, not to mention a billion years! Forever is a long time."
"Eh, you just can't understand these things because you are a godless heathen. It is like explaining colors to the blind!"
"Heh, I see you ran out of arguments again. Have fun hoping for a billion billion years of perfect boredom. I'm off to live while I still do."

***

Forever is indeed a long time. I know when I was a kid, I thought it over and found that I wouldn't want to live forever. A thousand years, sure. But not forever. But that was when I still was bored. Something has changed since then.

I can't point to any special day and say: "That's when I stopped being bored." It is not like when you stop smoking or masturbating or whatever. It's just that life became so interesting that there was no time for boredom. It may still return, I guess, if my body is weakened so much that I face massive inactivity. No longer being able to read or write or talk might do the trick. Or perhaps I would get back into meditation then, but I don't want to put this to the test before I absolutely must.

If I take a walk, ideas pop into my head. If I listen to music, emotions swirl inside me. If I sleep, dreams come to me. I cannot help but create. Even though my creations are not really improvements on God's creation. Compared to the immense depth of reality, my creations are shallow and threadbare. But they are mine, and they are new. And the very act of creating gives me pleasure of a deeper and fuller kind than just pleasing my senses. (Not that I deny myself a piece of chocolate most days, and such. But passive enjoyment alone would not satisfy me.)

I cannot believe that a good God would create a truly perfect afterlife that would just stand there like a monument, unchangeable. Back when I was a kid, it was common on the farms to have a room standing with the best chairs and the best rugs and so on and on, a place that should not be used except for special formal occasions. This was not a place for children to play. But in the ordinary living room, things were moved from here to there and back again as people lived, worked and played. The place was never quite the same, even though it was the same room. I think the New World should be like that. A place for God's children to play, and slowly grow up.

You haven't heard God complain over boredom, have you? As we get to grow in creation, we will be further and further removed from boredom.

***

And what about all the people? I have no idea how many we will meet, but probably millions and millions. Think how hard it is to really know one person. Even someone you love and live together with for years. Then think of all these people getting to know each other, learning from each other, understanding each other. And as we learn and grow, we return to one another as new and different people, starting the cycle anew. A spiral of insight and growth. That is how I imagine eternal life.

Not really all that different from now. For I feel, day by day, that I live a life that I would gladly go on living forever. (Not that I think I'm worthy of it, or anything.)