Time Passes
Today isn’t the anniversary of anything, at least that I know of, though I’m sure something happened today. It’s merely a day. Snap your fingers today. Then, when it rolls around next year, snap them again. That’s how fast time goes by if you’re not careful.
It’s struck me several times over the past two or three weeks, how fast time is going and how uncertain the future always is. I first realised this when I heard about the anniversary of the game Doom, comnsidered by all to be quite revolutionary in terms of graphics engines (though whether that’s true is another matter). Nontheless, it has been 13 years since Doom was released. 13 years have gone by. Half my life. I’ve seen towers rise and towers fall, governments come and go, the fall of communism and the rise of a new fascism and life continue. I’m 26 now. My nephew is younger than one of my favourite computer games. When I was his age the internet was something universities used to send stuff to each other, and look at it now.
Time travels by so fast and what do we achieve? 100 years ago, at my age I could be a colonel in the army, or a successful businessman, or a captain aboard a royal navy vessel. Today, it’s normal for someone my age to be just finishing up at university, or to be in a junior-level job. What has changed so that I achieve in 26 years what others might have achieved in 18? We don’t live that much longer; the average age is higher because there are fewer child deaths skewing the mean, but that doesn’t mean anything. We achieve less with more, live empty lives that are just the same day over and over again, and fear death as it rides inexorably toward us. Is it any wonder that nihilism is so very popular these days? Why group politics, complete submission to “the cause” or the extinction of the self in the gestalt of a popular movement is so very appealing to so many? It gives us respite from the consideration of death. By extinguishing our individuality now, we hope to lessen the burden of that ultimate cessation, that boundary to our lives beyond which we know nothing.
I tried explaining the concept of oblivion to my nephew the other day. I realised it’s impossible. It’s the absolute end. It’s nothing. As conscious beings we can’t comprehend the absence of consicence; even being unconscious has an end. The closest I can imagine is anaesthetic sleep, but even then there is a sliver of sensation. Death, to most people, means absolute oblivion, which they can never know, and which therefore scares the living shit out of them. For as long as there have been people, there has been an attempt to hide from death. Religion is often seen as such a crutch, and for many people if obviously is, as they live without hope and blindly follow rituals in order to assuage their fear.
I don’t fear death, much. I fear the preceeding events, the slow dwindling of the mind as the body begins to shut down, the abandonment of understanding and reason as hypoxia affects the brain. But I don’t fear death. If, as I believe, God waits on the other side then it is a joyous time. If I’m wrong, and all we get is oblivion, then I’ll never know, and that’s a comfort too in its own odd way. Perhaps, in the end, this lack of fear is what has stopped me striving on this world. It’s the ultimate nihilism without the self-loathing and fear that drives most people.
I beleive, though, that I should strive. I should work hard. I should make this world better by my presence; not because I am afraid of dying and never being known, or because I want to hide myself from death, but because it’s the right thing to do. Whatever purpose God had for placing me here has yet to be fulfilled, I kno that much and, frankly, the sooner I can get it over with the sooner I can go back to sleep because, to paraphrase Solomon, all else is vanity.
I feel better for saying that. More introspection.
