I’m fond of the slightly nihilistic view that no matter how much we think we’re stressed, under pressure, unsuccessful, or the polar opposite of all those things, on a cosmic timeline all these things are not even a blink of an eye. That they’re so tiny and transient that a 14 billion year old universe may as well not register them.
That, if we – as individuals or even as Homo Sapiens – really are the universe’s way of experiencing itself, our teensy tiny lifetimes are so insignificant as to make them virtually pointless.
Space is big, as Douglas Adams rightly and famously said. However, its bigness is not just physical; it’s also temporal. Time: there’s been a lot of it, mostly way before we invented ways to mark its passing, and there will be unfathomable aeons way after any human endeavour has fizzled out.
So everything is more or less worthless, or at least not worth the inordinate amount of meaning with which we imbue it.
And that’s true – but it’s not the whole truth, either.
Those things we do, the people we are, the things we make out of love, the way we treat each other, the feelings we feel – those are only dependent on time because we have to live somewhere. Where we live we experience it linearly and forwards. Crucially, too, we can remember those moments. Bring back the feelings. Bring back the love, at least as a memory of itself. When we connect with each other we share those moments – and a good kiss is truly timeless.
All this plays out everywhere, every moment, every day.
So, yes, on the timescale of eternity one second in one or two people’s lifetimes is immesurably small. A dribble of piss in an ocean. But time is not that ocean; time is the dribble. Time is only worthwhile if you can banish it for an instant of all-encompassing natural connection.
Wherever and whenever those moments occur in this cosmos, they happen. They will always have happened and always been ready to happen. What else is there that can turn time away from a moment of being? A moment in which there is nothing else but that feeling of disembodiment, of endlessness?
That is understanding beyond that of which humans are supposedly capable. That understanding informs the Universe about itself in ways that transcend temporality entirely. Those moments are the most important of all, and the fact they are so brief and tiny amidst the chaos of existence even on a human level makes them hugely significant.
The Earth is born, and one day will die too. Once we crawled here, and even if all traces of human existence are wiped out eventually, the Universe will itself remember what it was like to know that power is in unity. That fullness comes often from others. And that what happened here matters.
If it ever mattered, it will always matter; it is simply down to how it’s measured. And measurement depends on where you choose to stand. You have to be there to analyse this ultimate resistor-of-analysis. The paradox is beautiful, but without humanity here to live it then the Universe can never truly say it knows itself.
And never is a long time, by anyone’s standards.
