Lesson 3: Time is Too Short
“We have all the time in the world.â€? Uh, hello, no we don’t. You better hurry!
I’m so looking forward to eternity. In eternity:
* I’ll be able to give everyone the time they deserve. There’ll be none of “I’m sorry to dash away, but I’ve got [important thing here] to go to.â€? Time will be irrelevant; you’ll be able to spend 10, 100, 1,000,000 years with someone, and there’ll still be time to do everything else.
* I’ll be able to give me the time I want. I’ll be able to disappear into the hills and become a hermit for years. Everything will still be there when I get back. I’ll be able to spend as long as I want getting from one place to another—there’s no hurry.
* I’ll be able to give God the time deserved. Quiet Times™ (heh heh) can be as long as they need to be—I can wait forever.
* I’ll be able to do everything I want. None of this “pick a career,â€? “pick a hobbyâ€? nonsense; I’ll try them all! Jack of All Trades? Pah. Mastery, here I come!
* I would be able to finish this post properly. (Nah, I’m just kidding, I don’t really have anything more to say…)
What would you do with eternity?
Comment by Nato • Tue 9 Nov 04, 9:57 am #
Are you basing that on the fact heaven is perfect, or that we have infinite time?
If its based on infinite time, I don’t think it works… There would be infinite supply of time, but there would also be infinite demand, as people have infinity of it, and want to spend some of it with you. Aren’t the demands of spending time is proportional to the time they have available, not absolute?
Just a thought…
Comment by Nato • Tue 9 Nov 04, 10:03 am #
Also, I notice your RSS feed is back online - did you tinker with it at all? Or was it just that the post before ‘a question’ was bung?
Comment by Matt • Tue 9 Nov 04, 10:38 am #
I didn’t do anything… maybe the RSS didn’t like quotes in the title.
And I’m not sure that demand on time would scale infinitely—there’s still a finite number of people for one. Plus, if you know something is guaranteed to eventually happen, you’re likely to be more chilled out about it, in my experience.
Comment by Julian • Tue 9 Nov 04, 12:43 pm #
Matt, time is a human measure. I think that we have some choice in how we live. If you consider this life is a set amount, say x, and we have to divid x up into lots of things that we choose to put into it, i.e. x=job + house + play + love etc, and then panic cos it is a very full and ambitious venter, and so we become anxous around time, and use words like ‘dash’ to get from one place to the next, so we can get it done. what if we took a series veiw instead of a parallel view. Take all of life as a consept and put it to one side, and consider the present, and do what is important today. now as i type this i feel the constrains of a culture telling me to think ahead, plan, save, invest. telling me to live continually holding the future closer to my attention than the present, and hence the present gets ditched (in favour or anxiety) as i have to dash to the next important thing. To live presently is counter cultural, i think, and that is lonely and scary.