Metaphor 2 - Time as a Metaphor of Eternity

The chief problem of our happiness point-events is that time attenuates them. We say "time heals all wounds." But what we mean by that, rather, is that memory fades with time.

Time came into being with the creation of matter. Time is not just a clock ticking. It’s the creation’s processing. It is molecules moving, resulting in bodies decaying, hair turning grayer, and synapses in the brain gradually losing their connections so that, over time, a memory of a point-event that was once flesh and clear in our minds has now become less than what it once was to us in its immediacy, and may even have become lost to us altogether. It causes our experiences to be divided into an ill-remembered past, a minutely fleeting present, and unknown (at least by us) future. It serves us well enough indeed in healing wounds, but it minute by minute erases our point-events of happiness as if they were sand castles in a desert sand storm.

So, if we want a lasting happiness, one that is not always fading away and disappearing on us, we are talking about an everlasting happiness, or better yet an eternal one.

Is there a difference between something that is "everlasting" and something that is "eternal?" There is one I would like to make, even through they are used interchangeably. An eternal object can be conceived of as having no beginning and no end, and is therefore not subject to time, and indeed can be conceived of as existing outside time. While an everlasting object, like an eternal object, can be conceived of as not having an end, going on forever, but unlike an eternal object, one that is everlasting can be said to have a beginning and is therefore part of time. It is subject to having a past, a present, and a future.

But that is hard to imagine by creatures existing in time. So, I propose using time as a metaphor of eternity. The metaphor is this: to an object in eternity, every moment in time is being experienced as happening now. There’s no past, present, and future. All the moments of time are experienced as being in the present.

Imagine what the possibility of eternity means for happiness! The happiness of that ice cream cone you just tasted would not fade away as soon as you swallowed it, but would remain as fresh in your mind as if you had just tasted it again and again and again. The event of happiness would not longer be fleeting, but something that could be held, well, for all eternity.

But where can we find eternity? What has the quality of eternity? Well, here comes the next metaphor.