Life and time writ large

 

Subject: Life and time writ large.

 

 

Kafka once postulated that "the meaning of life is that it ends". Without a beginning or  an end there can be no middle, the whole is bounded, like bookends on a shelf, with space in between. What fits in the space is life itself, that ticking clock which once started will someday stop.

Why therefore do we make such a fuss about the inevitable stop and so little thought is given to our mode of living before it stops. Why do people fear not being around anymore after we have died and yet make little effort to recognise us whilst we are here. Why do we not take more notice of the span of our lives instead of taking tomorrow for granted. 

'Our life' is an experience, we play the central part but like a play, it's set in the context of our surroundings, our biological predisposition, our gender, and so many other things, none of which seem to place much emphasis on time. 

Some effort is made to conjure up a life outside of the allotted three score years and ten, religion for instance promotes an eternity of time in heaven or hell but like the mortgage lender is very dependant on paying off a debt.

Perhaps if we didn't have such a hedonistic talent for focusing on  ourselves, seeing ourselves as special, accepting the fact that we are individually pretty inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, then perhaps the envelope we live in would be seen as just that, a period of time to move around on earth, like a trip to the seaside to see the sights before returning to obscurity.

If we are just a collection of cells and sinew, with a memory to log and recognise events, to categorise them into important and less important then our own importance is purely self assessed and as such worth far less than the value we actually put on it.

Time outside the envelope, the eons of light years which are beyond our comprehension don't stop when we are born or start again when we die but continue as a backdrop to our worldly experience, time runs on as it always has and is, according to Einstein, the fundamental element, along with space, makes up our understanding of Relativity, that interconnectivity between events and the reasoning behind their connectivity.

Our life has little to say in this cosmic play other than as observers. Our coming and going is irrelevant and other than the relevance for those in your bubble, as our senses dampen and the mystique of tomorrow reveals that it's only a word to describe what, one day, you will no longer be part.  If days in a week or months in a year are seen, not from a personal but an impersonal perspective, a sort of meaningless jargon to count time whilst here on earth, then the real space/time conundrum is an actuality, not of our lives but life writ large.