FINITY strikes me at odd moments. Finity, of course, is not a word but I prefer it to finiteness, a clunky term.
It’s often the sight of students or, particularly, new graduates, walking giddily in their gowns with their pleased parents at their sides that triggers it. Often there’s no trigger, I’m simply blindsided by the knowledge that this is unarguably it.
Rita Ora said she has counselling to deal with her fear of death. I’m not afraid of death, per se, but it makes me furious to know that I will never know what happens next. Sometimes I like to imagine a terrifying, apocalyptic future for the world to relieve the frustration of understanding I will never see what the future holds because of my stupid, human body with its limited lifespan.
Think about all the billions and billions of people who have lived previously of whom there are no records, no memories, no nothing. You have your shot and then you’re done. This is perhaps why people have children, to keep themselves, in a way, going. I’m not sure that would help me; I would be jealous at their time, mine already used.
Think of the cave dwellers who might have been interested to listen to Sufjan Stevens on an iPod but will never have the chance. Or the thousands lost to smallpox who wouldn’t have been lost if they could just have held on until a later century.
The magnitude of it generates a heat that makes my brain sizzle at the edges.
Maybe we’ll live on Mars or find another inhabited galaxy. This might happen in 2115 but I won’t be here to see it.
There’s all that about atoms, how there is a finite number of atoms in the world, which must be recycled again and again. They say we are all made up of atoms that once belonged to Shakespeare. In America the story’s told with Abe Lincoln as the common denominator.
The probability of Sharkespeare’s atoms vibrating in my lungs is quite low. There’s an estimated 67,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of oxygen on earth and 6,350,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of carbon. But there will be a few of interest: ancient Egyptians, say, or a plague victim or some cave painter seeing out an ice age. Dinosaurs. Certainly some dinosaurs.
This gives me some degree of comfort. I miss my grandmother and my aunt Anne. Are their atoms now my atoms?
It’s not enough comfort, though, because no one knows whose atoms were whose, not for certain.
Philosophers have been dealing with this swirling uncertainty for centuries. Perhaps one day they'll solve the riddle. Of course, by then it will be only my atoms here to hear it.
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