After The End

One thing I have gained from studying Buddhism (as much as that phrase is somewhat non-Buddhist in its nature) is a true appreciation of impermanence. This understanding continues to deepen with time and experience.

I fairly often find myself looking around and wondering what a given area will look like in future configurations. This usually leads me to ponder the fact that everything we know and will ever know will someday not exist. This happened to me today, at work. I was driving down a local road, and I wondered when the road and neighborhood will cease to be, and what will follow it. I knew I was seeing a snapshot of a tiny, tiny, tiny part of spacetime.

That moment of pondering expanded into other aspects of my life as the day went on...

The house I live in is almost 100 years old, and has been in my family since 1926. Someday, though, it will no longer stand. The property may be subdivided and another house built upon it. The vegetable and flower gardens will be gone, as will the trees (SEE NOTE 1) . The many animals buried in the yard -- pets, wildlife, strays found dead in the street -- will dissolve over time, or perhaps be dug up and disposed of in a future excavation. My family's association with the property will eventually be lost.

My father died in 1992. My mother is now 91. One of my brothers has had several cancerous growths removed and is having issues with diabetes. All four of the boys in the family have had heart procedures. My sister, though perhaps the healthiest person in the family (despite her disabilities), has begun to show a decline in health over the last couple of years. Some of my cats are nearly ten years old, and my beagle is 11. My wife and I are both in our 40s. As close as we are, the idea that "our love will be forever is a farce." One of us will likely die before the other. In time, there will be no trace of either of us in the universe (aside from the context of conservation of energy/matter, of course).

I have had a few close brushes with death. The delicate nature of life and the swiftness with which things can happen do not hide from me. I know that nearly anything can happen at any moment.

Historical buildings. Roads. Neighborhoods. Nations. Languages. All these things, and all other things, will cease to be.

Eventually, of course, the earth will cease to be. Humanity, I suspect, will have, by that time, found a way to continue on elsewhere if it has not wiped itself out. But even the universe will grow cold and die a slow heat death at some point, or perhaps fall back in upon itself. the laws of physics do not point to any happy endings. No universe, no people.

You may be thinking that this is a pretty morbid and depressing way of looking at things. I would disagree. It is merely the acceptance of reality, and that acceptance allows one to appreciate the world more.

We make up stories about fairylands where we will live forever after we die. That lack of acceptance and fear of reality, to me, is much more disturbing than the acceptance of finiteness. And it is not just disturbing on a philosophical or emotional level, there is also a negative pragmatic effect (SEE NOTE 2).

When you believe that you have eternity to get things right and unlimited spatial-temporal resources, it is easy to be blase about the here and now. I think that history shows that worldviews that promote this sort of fantasy devalue life (SEE NOTE 3).

When you accept that all is impermanent, you tend to have a greater appreciation for the wonder of it all. As far as I can tell -- that is, as far as the evidence shows -- this is it for what I know as "me." The implication is that I had better damn well appreciate it while I can, and not squander it.

XXX

NOTE 1: We have had to take down four 100-year-old oaks in the yard over the last few years, and the tree I planted in fifth grade is so big that my neighbor would like to see it taken down before it falls onto their house. The tree that was my father's last Christmas tree was damaged by a storm in March and we had to have it taken down.

NOTE 2: There is a related effect that is important but not relevant to my topic today: These sorts of worldviews also tend to think that the universe, and life, are some sort of cheap magic trick performed by some supernatural being that snapped its fingers, wiggled its nose, or otherwise effortlessly created all that we know and will ever know. That allows a pretty cheap, cheesy view of life. When we look at the facts, though, we see that all that is is the result of a delicate-yet-violent, magnificent dance of forces, energy, and matter on spacetime scales that are literally unimaginable to humanity. That is much more special than a parlor trick that could be done over at will.

NOTE 3: Really, it is simple math: If you expect that your life will be, say 80 years, then the worth of any particular moment (we'll call this value M) in your life is divided by 80 years (M=X/80y). If you believe that you will be intact for eternity, then any particular moment is infinitely less valuable (M=X/Infinity). That implication is shown in the lack of value that most religions put on life. The wholesale massacres and abuses by gods and their adherents ("Kill 'Em All, Let God Sort 'Em Out" as the popular Bible Belt bumper sticker/t-shirt tells us) can much more easily be justified when the worth of any particular moment in any being's life is, literally, infinitesimally small. I could go on much further with this, but you get the idea.