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The time will come when what is not mine will remain not mine, and what is mine will no longer be mine. She, who is in my hands at this moment, will no longer be mine. There will be no more me, no more people, and no more world. There will only be emptiness. I find this depressing.
Good Catholics believe that just as there was a past, there is a present, and there is a future. I say this because in their prayers, there are words like: “… as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end…” To me, this sounds like a belief that the past, present, and future are all equally real. Some philosophers hold a similar view; they are called “eternalists.” Eternalists may not be entirely wrong. Even people like my kind-hearted Catholic girlfriend might agree with them on certain things. If there is no past, doesn’t that mean there is no original sin? If there is no future, then everything we did in the past, and everything we are doing now, is the same as not having done it, since there is no tomorrow. And if there is no tomorrow, there is no Judgment Day, so sinners and saints alike will all go to heaven. But that strikes me as preposterous!
I have not studied theology, and I don’t have a deep understanding of philosophy. But still, this sounds like nonsense to me. My dear little Catholic! I don’t mean to offend you, but how can this be? How can the past, present, and future all be real? Are they trying to tell me that time is like three adjacent rooms: first, you are in the first room, then at some point, you find yourself in the middle one, and eventually, you end up in the third room? But that’s ridiculous. First of all, no one wants to go into the third room, not even if you threaten to kill them if they don’t. Secondly, no one has ever seen these rooms. I haven’t, you haven’t, and neither has my good little Catholic girlfriend. Thirdly, if the second room didn’t appear before the first one disappeared, where was it then?
I conclude, then, that all this talk of past, present, and future is a fool’s errand. If, right now, my love is in my hands, how could it not be real? But if, right now, she keeps slipping through my fingers, how could she be real? How can all this — you, me, the world, and the people in it — be real? If it were, life might as well end now. For if there is no past, I have nothing to remember or regret; if there is no future, I have nothing to look forward to. If a meteorite hit the earth right now and destroyed it, too bad, as there would be no one left to worry about it!
I tell myself that if you have not truly lived, then it’s too bad, because now you have nothing to live for. If the real reason you haven’t truly lived is because, like a banker, you’ve done your calculations, and you’ve got it all figured out — “My investments have not yet matured; good days are still to come” — well, if that’s you, then what can I say! In that case, you had better bet your money on eternalism, hoping it’s the truth. Or perhaps you’ve been a cautious person or a saint, cultivating virtue your entire life, waiting for heaven to come. If that’s the case, what can I say?
As for myself, I envy the cicada, which knows neither spring nor autumn; I envy the mushrooms, which are born in the morning and die in the evening. I envy the corals of the coral reef. One great night, under a full and eerily silent moon, thousands of corals suddenly wake up and, unanimously, release their seeds of life into the vast ocean, transforming it into the scene of a gigantic procreation orgy. If I had to choose, I would choose to be a coral and live in the coral reefs!
Audio version here:
Yego’s Chronicles 