Monday, June 11, 2012

Meditation 2: The Fiction of Forevermore


Everyone knows that things change.  Nothing much seems to stay the same.  Nevertheless, the mountains in whose shadow you were born, or the ocean in which you swam, remain much as they were.  People may build up towns in the mountains and resorts by the beach, but compared to comings and goings of humans and their creations, the sea and the mountains are forever.

Metaphors of forever abound in our common language.  Especially where love is concerned, the songs sing of it outlasting the sea and the mountains.  When the lover pledges love that will last until the mountains run into the sea, we are to think that they never will.  We have the idea of forevermore.  Also, when we hear of the eternal renown of great poets, artists, philosophers, or political or military leaders, we think they will be remembered forever. And when people speak of their children as a gift to the future, there is an idea of forevermore in the back of their minds.


These are fictions, but endearing ones and enduring ones.  There is no such thing as forevermore.  The mountains will erode.  The sea will dry up or freeze, the river change its course.  The artists and the generals will be forgotten.  It is only because our lives are so short that we imagine that there are some things that never change.  When you start listening for the phrases of forevermore, you will hear them in many places, but if they are just fictions, then why do we need them so much?

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