Of Sand and Spares
Much like our comprehension of space, our comprehension of time is determined by our visceral experience of it. The distance between 50 years and 500 years feels greater than that between 400 million years and 500 billion years. Stalin understood this when he said "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic". Our minds seems to be cameras that can only capture the world with a set resolution.
So you'd be forgiven if you experienced a bit of a breakdown occasionally. As beings blessed and cursed with self awareness and a "will to meaning" we will occasionally wonder why we build castles in the sand.
We then might kick the castle altogether and buy a red convertible. We might take a sabbatical from the world of sandy contractors to lick frogs in Mexico. We might just sulk and lay down on the soft sand, faceplanting right into our work. Choices, choices.
We could of course, keep at it. Why do we build castles in the sand, in the first place? Is it not to play? To engage with the world? To make memories in the moment? To connect us with the people we are with at the beach? Or if we're alone, to connect us with a sense of joy? At the very least, it's to relieve boredom, and sometimes that's enough.
We know full well what the fate of our masterpiece will be, but we do it anyway because legacy is not the point. It cannot be the point because permanence is an illusion. To seek it out with clear idea of its nature is to try and eat the ocean with a fork.
Contemplation and acceptance of impermanence is just a shift in our perception of a thing which remains unchanged. Does it prevent a relapse? Nope. It's not a magic pill, and it can make things worse in the beginning stages. I do suspect that as I repeat this, the muscle that pushes against nihilistic tendencies gets stronger with use.
Beyond this, I've also resorted to Nietzsche's concept of Eternal Recurrence. I imagine myself being reborn over and over in a cyclical universe - living my life in a cosmic Groundhog Day. Mathematically it could be argued that this sliver of a cycle, being multiplied an infinite number of times, is infinite. And since it is infinite, it is equal to the whole shebang.
A head-scratcher, that one. But it's also plausible if we take into account that cyclicality is a fundamental pattern that we observe from very large phenomena to the teeny tiny. At any rate, it gives casts doubt on a nihilistic "logic" that only seems ironclad because it is looked at through despair. It also lights a fire under your ass, because if there's something you hate living with, the thought of living through the experience for all eternity makes you want to change it.
Another realisation I've found helpful is that I tend to look at larger scales, but never smaller scales. I'm tall compared to some, short compared to others. As a citizen of a reasonably advanced economy, I'm rich compared to billions of people, but poor compared to millions.
Likewise, the scale of time extends both ways. 80 year lifespans are a single frame in a 100-season 3-hour-per-episode Netflix series we call the universe, but an infinitude of creatures experience time on a very compressed scale. The average lifespan of an insect is a single year. Our skin cells only live for two to four weeks, depending on how well you exfoliate.
Since the scale of time extends in both directions infinitely, our position on that scale is neither on one side nor the idea. It is not short, and it is not long. It simply is what it is.
It's at this point where I start to sense an uneasy buildup. I hear a voice asking "Alright, so what then? What's your point, bro?!" I suppose the point, that there are reasons to keep on keeping on, sounds laughably simplistic now.
But I think of these contemplative tools as just tools to get a real job done. They're the jack, wrench and spare tyre we need to keep us on our way when we get a flat. The changing of the tyre is not the point of the journey, it merely facilitates it and is therefore a part of it.
