Eternity
I imagine that my introduction to time-with-no-end came when I was old enough to understand the concluding words of my first fairy tale, “And they lived happily ever after.” At some point in my discovery, the word ever after was replaced with forever, and forever was eventually replaced with the word eternity, infinite or unending time.
I have no idea at what age I started giving serious thought to eternity (the notion that time has no end), but my father, a profound thinker, took the meaning to a whole new, incomprehensible level.
“Son, if the earth were a solid brass ball and every one thousand years a dove flew by and brushed its wing against the earth, by the time that brass ball wore down to the size of a BB, caused by the brushing of the dove’s wing against its surface, that would be the beginning of eternity.”
Every time I heard those concluding words, “that would be the beginning of eternity,” it would give me a heart-stopping pause. Decades later, it still does.
Are people born with an innate sense of eternity in their hearts or souls, whichever is preferred? Is such an awareness realized in an intangible place of our being, which never seems to grow any older while our physical body ages? Is there a sixth sense in humans, the reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, as Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine coined it? Can I take at face value the words of King Solomon, who said, “God has put eternity into man’s heart.”
Over the years, there has been an increasing internal awareness that an intangible part of me is spiritual, for lack of a better word, rather than physical. At 67 years old, I am more mindful than ever that my body is aging. I don’t have near the agility I once had, and I’m physically unable to do things that once came without a second thought. Worse yet, I am more cognizant of the harsh reality that there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop this progression.
At the same time, I am increasingly aware that another part of me doesn’t age. Instead, it seems to hang within my subconscious as if in a state of limbo-an uncertain period of awaiting some decision or resolution. I interchangeably refer to this intangible place as my heart or my soul. I best make sense of it as the seat of my personality. It is the residence of who I am, of how I think and feel, along with all of the emotions I exhibit. It makes me different from anyone else, those attributes that are unique to me and me alone.
I have an ever-deepening awareness that this place has no end while temporarily contained in a perishable vessel. This became all the more evident the morning I saw the lifeless body of a close friend just moments after she breathed her last. She was young, a wife and mother of two, who laid before me devoid of the vibrant personality that made her so special.
The personal awareness of eternity became clear as I sat by the hospital bed of a man dying of emphysema. His family had asked if I would visit him in the hospital. He was by no means a religious man who, when asked, would have confidently said he believed in nothing. I would soon discover that this was not true. He believed in a whole lot more.
As I entered his hospital room and introduced myself, he invited me to pull up a chair and sit down. He was not a particularly friendly man, but it was evident that he was lonely and therefore welcomed company of any sort. As I sat by his bedside, there was an awkward silence while I scrambled to think of things to say to this stranger in such a vulnerable state. The awkwardness was broken by his request to quiz him on some Trivial Pursuit questions that rested on the nightstand. After reading several questions he answered correctly, I came upon one that completely stumped him.
“What is a nihilist?” I read aloud. “Hmm…I don’t know,” he responded. Flipping the card over, I read the answer, “One who believes in nothing.” “That’s me,” he quickly reacted, “I don’t believe in anything!” There was an anxious and nervous tone to his voice.
I continued with the next question, not thinking too much about his quasi curt and abrupt reaction. Then, out of the blue, he said, “I don’t know if you know this or not, but I want to be cremated.” Having just met the man and therefore having no reason to know such a personal detail of his life, I told him as much, “No, I didn’t know.” In a somewhat somber and surrender acquiescent tone, he purposefully added, “With the emphysema and not being able to breathe and all, I just can’t stand the thought of lying in a coffin with a lid so close to my face.”
I thought this to be a rather strange reaction from someone who believed in nothing. In that single conversation, it became evident to me that this man had given a lot of thought to the reality of the eternalness of a person’s soul.
Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash
