19 April, 2010

Had a Visit

Yes indeed I had a visit from the nice people at my local church, St Stephen’s Parish church. After pushing a leaflet through the door they knocked and I opened it  be greeted by a man and his wife spreading the word about our local church.

He asks me if I know of a man called Jesus and I reply yes I know of this Jesus character. He seemed happy and as if reading from a script asked me

“How long do you want to live?”

Now this to me is a simple one to answer , I would like to live for as long as possible but not forever. This seemed to puzzle my visitor as he expected the standard answer of eternity.

Now why do I not want to live forever? because that is simply put my idea of Hell. Our mortality defines us knowing that one day all this will be over makes it so much more precious. For billions of years atoms in the universe have swirled around and through an incredible series of astonishing events have come together for but a tiny fraction on the cosmic scale come together to make me. As Carl Sagan put it “We are a way the cosmos can know itself”.

Eternal life would rob our existence of such great things as discovery and what would you do after the first thousand or so millennia ? I have met so many people on this journey of life that I will never see again but when you think that each one of us is unique and only here for the blink of an eye on that cosmic scale, it makes this thing we call life truly worth living.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Yeah, I would love to live for a hell of a long time- perhaps into the hundreds and hundreds of years- if it were somehow possible, but definitely not forever.