Abraham Yeung - Blog Q4 Week 13 - Eternity.
Eternity is the oldest dream.
Immortality. War. Children. Legacy. To become eternal is to transcend the limits of our humanity, our mortality. It brings us closer to perfection, to divinity, to a life better than the one we currently suffer through.
Maybe my children can transcend my humanity. If I can keep this warm, beautiful little ball of flesh alive for a decade, it will grow up to be big, strong and handsome. It cries out for me, for its parent. I get this warm fuzzy feeling. Perhaps this is what it is like to love. I’ve decided. I’ll care for it. When it get sick and bedridden, I will care for it. When it screams in pain from injury, I will stay by its side. Season by season, year by year, I will hug it, kiss it, give it my love. It may hate me, it may leave me one day, and yet this offspring of mine will be my legacy. To you, I leave you my everything. I only ask for you to remember me. Maybe then I can become eternal.
There are far more entertaining things than what these weak-willed beggars call love. How can they possibly know what it means to hold sway over a million, a billion people? One word from me, and a billion of these plebians starve. Another, and they gladly die, disembowling and scalping each other without ever needing another command. Power is beauty. It is the distinction between the lessers and us.
It feels empty. We hold all this power, and yet, something doesn’t feel right.
It doesn’t matter.
As long as I can have more power, more obedience, that void in my heart will be filled. Maybe it’ll be fixed if I can keep holding onto power forever. Yes, forever. I should be immortal. Then I can finally, truly be different from these lessers. Death is equal to all, but if I can defeat Death, then I will be closer to God.
Immortality is impossible.
Still, we must strive to transcend our short lives. How should we do it? We remember the greatest of humanity though history. Then we too must be remembered in history. Those that are recorded in history remain eternal.
But how can we remain eternal in history? A five-hundred foot stone monument to the sky? Become the first to do something? Kill a tenth of the planet? Take over the planet? Be the richest ever? Eternity is granted to a select few, and so we must be special.
But someone has already done it. Then, limits exist to be broken. Who dares limit us? We are not in the days of crawling through jungles and savannahs in fear of tigers and lions. Nor are we in the ancient world of evil kings and emperors, where only a select few rule. Then how can we truly make our mark into history? There is nothing else to crush underfoot.
Oh, we forgot.
Everyone is equal now. Then we can step on top of each other.
After all, if we reach the pinnacle, we have a chance of becoming eternal.
Hi Abraham! I enjoyed the tone of your blog, blending pessimism with fervent motivation to achieve eternity. It reminds me of the concept of ouroboros—something so simple, yet so creative, representative of an endless cycle, eternity. Just the mental image of it, a snake biting its own tail, is so pleasing to think about.
ReplyDeleteEspecially in stories, the desire to transcend the “bounds” of humanity and become immortal is forever present, and drives some of the most compelling characters. It’s sort of a threshold, a door to be unlocked before transcendence, the ultimate goal of existence, can be reached. But all good stories need an ending.
Eternity isn’t always great either. Plastics are eternally on this Earth. The world we live in isn’t eternal. The sky, the stars, the vast cosmos will all dissipate into dust one day. If eternity is the final destination, then creatures like fungi or bacteria are infinitely closer to it than humanity will ever be. However, the perspective of a human, who counts the passing of time through increments seemingly negligible compared to light years, everything from art, to knowledge, and discoveries of the world will last forever. If we aren’t eternal, our footprints on the Earth will be. And even if they aren’t, perhaps it's even more powerful to persist despite knowing we will be washed away by the sands of time.
Hi, Abraham. I really like the tone and prose of your blog. I think it’s so interesting how humans (myself included) place such a heavy importance on being remembered. Fame, as you mentioned, is something that many people chase. On the surface, I think it comes from a deep desire to be glorified and memorialized in a way that leads to immortality. However, fame is heavily superficial. Fans or the general public create a persona of famous people because they fill in blanks of their personality that adhere to their opinion of them. Because the public obviously does not truly know the famous person, the legacy famous people leave behind is through their accomplishments, good or bad, but not their true self.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, leaving a legacy through one’s children is something deeply intimate and irreplaceable. I mean, who truly knows you better than those who literally know you for their entire life? However, there are numerous problems with this situation too. This scenario assumes a perfect case in which one has the opportunity to even be remembered through their children. Though I’m not sure if being remembered after death even matters. If you’re dead, you won’t know either way.
There are a million different scenarios for both fame and family situations. So, I don’t really know how people remain eternal. But, we have a long time to figure it out. Maybe I don’t even want to be immortal.
Eternity, while a much desired and long held dream of humanity, is a concept that could both harm or help. The concept of eternity in itself is fascinating, but in reality eternity is not quite as amazing.
ReplyDeletePart of the importance of life is that it is short. People are spurred to invent, to do what they want, precisely because their time is limited. If people were to live eternally, many fundamental aspects of life would be entirely changed, with society having to quickly adapt and change.
Besides that, even if immortality is achieved and one becomes eternal, people will never be satisfied. One only wants what they cannot have, so humanity will eternally pursue the next great thing. Regardless of how much humanity achieves, the void can never truly be filled.
Hi Abraham, I can’t lie, when I read the title of your blog I thought you were going to write about the movie Eternity starring Elizabeth Olsen. Anyway, I love the comparison you drew between eternity and perfection. I think people take for granted the pedestal that humanity places its most important historical figures. Even those who have sinned and have made mistakes, with a few exceptions those whose names are etched in our history books have more or less had their successes and errors celebrated. The question you posed towards the end of your blog about how we can make our mark in history is such a circumstantial question because of the times we are living in. As you correctly pointed out we are no longer nomads, nor do we live in a world that is completely overridden with authoritarian leaders that hold all the power. The problem with history is that it is biased, the winners are the ones who have their account etched in the books and so while we have an idea of what happened, we must remember that there is a whole other story that has been suppressed because they didn’t have the luck of being victorious. Eternity is a fuzzy concept and I really liked the way that you explored it, but what is the point of eternity? If we live fully, if we live honestly, making memories, building and maintaining the relationships that matter that is enough. I came across a very powerful quote the other day, “We die twice, once when we are buried 6 feet under the earth, and the second time is when our name is uttered for the last time” and what that meant to me is that we live for us and those around us. There is glory in being remembered until the end of times, cemented in history books, but at the end of the day, what is the point? We won’t be alive to reap the benefits.
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