November 18th, 2009
"Eternal"
Gonna do this in two takes today. Dreary one first, thoughtful one second:
Take 1
The so-called "human" condition is not so human, but certainly eternal. The stresses and strains, the challenges, the competition, the letdowns, the danger ... these are all a part of living, unfortunately. Though we may intellectualize them and consider them symptoms of our "modern" society, what we are really living with is the eternal experience faced by all living things: Competition for resources. As long as there are resources (forever, then) and as long as there are lives vying for their piece of those resources (a long long time) there will be strife, misery, heartbreak, destruction, and death.
Take 2
I recently revisited my old definition of life: "Life is a temporary and dynamic reprieve from total entropy." A few 25-cent words in that one :-) But, despite its pomposity, it points out that though we may be temporary, the great continuum (entropy) is eternal. We won't live forever, but that doesn't mean we completely disappear when we're gone ... for as long as we are here, we can make an imprint on that entropic trend. As long as we are alive, we have the power to leave a splash and a ripple in the waters of time, and the current before we arrive and the current after we leave will be different by the amount of impact we make during our lives. So what if we are temporary? We add to the eternal continuum.
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