Monday, July 1, 2019

Perspective in Eternal Families

This is just some nonsense that I liked on a board.


Part of the equation is expectations, didn't you guys learn anything from Johnie Lingo? If you've been brought up to view yourself as a prince who will rule the world someday, and then upon adulthood informed that not only are you not really a prince, but flat broke, a nobody, not really talented, and if you wish to continue to eat, better to get a job at 7-11 if they'll take you; then that could be depressing. But had you been brought up in a broken home without guidance and low self-worth, and then after a youth made up of lots of bad mistakes, given a chance at that 7-11 job, it might look like a real opportunity.

I've lost people in my life, and quite honestly, hard as it is, the page turns, and the thought of seeing them again just doesn't feel right. To the extent that it sounds nice, it's an idle fantasy, unfortunately. I could write for pages on that topic, but just to point out one thing, nobody really thinks it through past the blissful moment of being reunited, and into the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, the centuries after that, and the billions of years, and eons later. Now conceive of the largest number that you can't really conceive of, and that many centuries doesn't even begin to get you started on the time you're going to spend with that person you knew for a handful of years in mortality. At a certain point, the imbalance of the vast other side so determined by the fleeting moments on this side just gets kind of silly. And I'm not just talking about the setup: the idea of a single test that determines everything forever, but the idea that the bonds established in such a transient time compared to the vastness of eternity, that they need to be ensconced in epoxy resin for "Tree3" orders of time in order a) to have any meaning at all or b) in order to have hope in life.