Earth is around 4.5 billion years old- a length of time that is too colossal for us to even fully comprehend, let alone completely understand…
We don’t understand it because we think that our lives, of which the majority will be less than a century old- have been going on forever, or at least, I do. So how then, when no more than 100 years feels like forever, can 4.5 billion years possibly feel like the same? In fact, how can that length of time even exist, for that matter? Like I said, its incomprehensible.
What most of us also find incomprehensible, is the fact that our lives haven’t, and undoubtedly won’t, ‘go on forever.’ The century (at the most) that we are alive for, despite it feeling to us like ‘forever’, is actually nothing more than the blink of an eye to our planet. In other words, then, no sooner are we born, than we are gone.
This is not just true of our own existence, either, but that of our planets, too. How so? Because, as we know (or rather, as we should know), the basic laws of science states that: ‘everything that is created must, one day, be destroyed.’ In other words, nothing is permanent and, planet earth? Well, it certainly isn’t an exception to this. Why? Because, the fact is that our sun is constantly expanding, something which will, eventually, result in everything in proximity to earth being effectively ‘swallowed.’ The result of this? That you and I, along with everything and everyone else in our solar system, will, in the not-too-distant future, be no more, for, we will cease to exist, with all traces of our physical presence, being gone.
Thinking about the ‘minuteness’ of our existence then compared to that of our planets, it really helps us to put our perceived ‘problems’ into perspective, doesn’t it? It makes us realise that all those petty arguments we have, they’re just that– petty– and nothing short of insignificant. And it also makes us realise how we should never take anything for granted, not even so much as a second of our precious life.
Now, I could quite easily let the indisputable impermanence of life and our planet fill me with a sense of hopelessness and futility but, I don’t. My spirituality and strong held belief in the presence of something bigger than us and this lifetime keeps me feeling hopeful, despite the lack of hope that knowing everything I have ever known will one day come to an end fills me with.
Whilst yes, this life and our physical form will end, our truest form- energy– will not. How can this be the case when we know that ‘everything that has been created must be destroyed?’ Well, it is the case because energy hasn’t been created for it has always been here, and therefore its destruction is not a ‘given’ (i.e., it will not happen.) Knowing this, knowing that my physical form and my physical home will come to an end, but despite this, my purest form and my home in the truest sense of the word will not, brings me a great deal of comfort and, I hope that it does the same for you, too.
So, always remember that, despite the indisputable impermanence of the physical realm, the spiritual realm is infinite. In other words, it will never ‘end’ and therefore, nor will we.
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