The snow lies deep, parking lots remain unplowed.  The world has not ended in ice. Not yet. Not today. I am comforted by my customary warm cup of coffee with the green goddess Starbucks logo. Many worship at the altar of the green goddess. There are far worse religious obsessions.  With this one, what you see is what you get. No sleight of hand hocus-pocus such as the promise of eternal life.

My awareness has been stimulated by several discussions with friends on the topic of time.  It is impossible to say “what” time is.  Apparently time is not a “what.”  Nothing can be abstracted from human consciousness that we can point to and say, “That is time.”  Time is what we identify as our manner of processing the content of the material world, in which we were born, grew, received and gave love, married, cared for children and observed others dying.  Time is a meaning, the meaning is change.  Without change would there be any meaning?  I do not think so.  Mere observation entails involvement between observer and the observed.

But at some point all of this has to end.  The ending is inscribed into the beginning.  There are many ways to say it.  “Everything that lives dies,” is one expression.  Vegetative life has a period, a span.  Every Fall I wonder at the beauty, and the meaning of deciduous trees shedding their leaves.  I sense a kinship with them.  Animals too.  Many have grieved the loss of a beloved pet.

In Buddhism the moment of life’s passing is depicted as a candle flame extinguished.  I like the metaphor.  Candles were the primary source of light, made-by-hand for many generations.  Their light was limited in scope and in duration.  (No illusion of eternal life)  We still use candles in our homes for the meaning they convey, the utility of the LED light source not with standing.

Who does not desire to live eternally?  I once thought so.  Sometimes I still do.  But I’m not sure it would be the blessing that it appears on the surface.  Consider two quotations on the finitude of individual human life, and of all being…..

You can’t keep it up forever, though.  You’re going to burn out sooner or later.  Everybody does.  It’s the way people are made.  In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts.  So don’t worry, you’ll burn out.  Especially in the world that you’re trying to deal with: everybody burns out.  There are too many tricky things going on in it, too many ways of getting into trouble.  It’s a world made of tricky things.

—excerpt, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle  by Haruki Murakami

 

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

—-excerpt, Burnt Norton by T. S. Eliot