Today, I want to write about a topic which is quite personal to me: the finite nature of all things. The fact that all things which begin must one day end.
I’ve written about this before. In fact, some years ago when I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to be, pondering this topic was one of the first things I wrote. However, I wrote about it to try to take my mind off of something which was troubling me. This time I want to take a deeper look into what troubles me, knowing that confronting it through writing is my surest form of self-therapy.
What troubles me is that everything is timed. From birth, our bodies keep track of how long we’ve been alive. We go through phases of our lives, each of which have their own beginnings and ends. When our awareness begins to form and we learn how to parrot the manners of our parents we begin the phase called “childhood,” and when we become aware enough about the world around us that we start to take responsibility for it that phase ends and the phase known as “adulthood” begins.
Then, from there, we continue to live out our lives as we see fit. We work for our society, we pursue our passions, we fall in love, then out of love, then back into love, so on and so on. Each of these things, individually, also begin and end. Education, employment, friendships, marriage – indeed, even our lives eventually reach an end, and if our prior agreements had not already broken by then they will surely be broken at that point. “’Til death do us part,” as it is said.
This isn’t an easy topic for me to think about, because it encompasses so many things which test the strength of my will. I was introduced to astronomy at a young age, and from it I learned of what is quite possibly the greatest finality a person can currently comprehend: that the sun, one far off day billions if not trillions of years in the future, will eventually expand such that it bursts and eradicates life as we know it in this solar system.
“Would there still be grocery stores left?” I wondered in my childish mind. But no, it was explained to me that there would truly be nothing left. Nothing. That we would cease to be. That I would cease to be. Never mind, of course, that I would have ceased to be long, long before that day. I had never even considered the idea of mortality until that point. And I attempted, desperately, to never consider the idea again.
It was from that day that the reality that I exist, that I am, became very apparent in my conscious mind. Whenever I observed that I am, that I am an individual, I breathe, I live, I think, I am no one else and I am myself, I would feel an almost crippling paralysis overcome me as I simply could not rationalize a reality in which I didn’t exist. And I would cry, and throw hysterical fits, screaming “I don’t want to die” at the top of my lungs.
But my days of dreading the end of all things are, for the most part, behind me. No longer do I lay down paralyzed with fear knowing that my time as the person I am now is limited. The more I accepted that time itself is a meaningless construct, the more comfortably I was able to make the most of it. Now, instead of trapping and attempting to rationalize my pain, I write about it knowing it relieves the pain and with the hope that it benefits someone else as much as it benefits me.
Yes, everything must some day come to an end. But what is lamenting that inevitability if not the cruelest waste of our own finite existence? I’ve often seen others express the notion that “life is short” – well if it is, we’d damn well better make use of what time we do have to live as happily as we can. I assert that when this is done, rather than spend time regretting the past or fearing the future, that we often find ourselves much more fulfilled and with more time than we once thought we had.
The thing I find most important and which not a lot of people seem to grasp or show appreciation for is that between a start and a stop there is a continuation – a period of passing time. For example, let’s say you want to walk across a room from one side to another. To do so, you must start moving your body (walking), walk until you have reached the other side of the room, and then stop. You can’t go from point A to point B without going from point A to point B.
Living day to day, month to month, year to year, is truly no different. Our lives are full of activities which begin, are done, and then end. But what we sometimes forget is that we spend more time doing than we do starting or stopping anything. In fact, maybe we spend so much time doing that we fail to realize we’re starting or stopping anything at all, and it all feels like one big mess of passing time with no beginning or end and thus no satisfying resolutions.
So mired are we in the passing of this time that “the journey” before we reach our destination becomes something we reject, for we have been forced to embark on far too many a journey which we did not choose and have started to think that any such activity is suffering and a waste of our valuable time. School is suffering, your job is suffering, your marriage is suffering – yet these things shape you, provide for you, and give you companionship.
Instead of living for these things, however, we lament. Sure, we put on a good show. Do enough homework to get a passing grade. Appease the boss with an average product. Assure the spouse we love them even when there is no satisfaction involved. But deep down, we lament. We lament our suffering and think to ourselves, “life is short. And oh, how I’d rather spend my life with anything but this.”
Would you really?
If you find yourself thinking these things, I encourage you to reassess your life. Somewhere along the line you got forced into doing or being or having something you’d rather not. And I can understand that, I assure you. We’ve all been in that situation, and some of us know it so well that we spend our whole lives with it. We’re all dealt a few bad cards, without a doubt, but that’s no reason to toss the whole hand. You are the one who decides how to play those cards once they’re yours.
I must admit, I never wanted to pick up the cards I was dealt. I never wanted to play this game at all. Not when I was younger, at least. But I’ve changed. I own my fate now. I reject any notion that what I bring upon myself is somehow not my responsibility. So I’ll die one day. So the sun will blow up one day. So what about that? I’m alive now, and it’s my life now, and what I decide to do with my life is my decision and will always remain my decision.
Start living, continue living, and when you stop living, do it with a smile and a contented heart knowing that you gave it your all and had a fulfilling life. That is my sincerest wish for you, dear reader. Some of us wish for beginnings which haven’t happened yet, and some of us wish far too soon for an end to things with no end in sight, but you are ultimately responsible for how your time is spent. Right now, right where you are, what you are doing or not doing is your decision.
At one point in my life I was so fixated on the end of all things that I couldn’t even live with all the time I had. At another I was fixated on the things which I had to start but wished I didn’t and suffered thinking about them even with the moments spent away from them which could have been my own.
That is suffering which I wouldn’t dare wish on anyone. But I have since broken the cycle and have learned to better appreciate the things which I must do in life. I have recognized that it truly is my decision to keep going. No one else can make that decision for me.
Of course I still struggle. Living often involves a struggle. But so what about that? Living also involves so many things which make me truly happy – not the least of which being sharing my thoughts with all of you who would take the time to read them. For sticking with me and making it to the end of this, I cannot thank you enough.
Having opened my heart and mind and felt pressure of years past come out of me, I will turn my eyes to the future and the things which I will start, and which I will continue, and which I will end. That is my decision. What I do now is in my hands. And I choose to live.
One Among Nothing 