Blogs by A. Colin Wright
Time versus Eternity
12/2/2009 12:27:23 PM
Addition to "What I Believe (part four)"
A few days ago I was going over my articles and I found to my dismay that I'd omitted a whole paragraph from my already too long article "What I Believe (Part Four)." Well I certainly don't want to add a fifth part, so I've edited the fourth so as to include it. If you haven't yet read Part Four, there's no problem, but if you have, so as to avoid re-reading all of it, you might like to note that I added the following paragraph:
"For a problem we all have is that of time as opposed to eternity. When I was young, I used to think of eternity just as time going without end, and soon enough, with my mind in a spin, I had to stop. Since then I’ve learnt to think of eternity, as many others have said, as being the one moment of “now.” Intellectually that makes sense to me, and yet in my experience of this life I am limited by my perception of it as a succession of moments as past changes to future. In commanding a particular result, I then find myself asking when it will happen. When will I finally become “successful” (as I understand it), for example? In the eternal moment of “now,” I can see myself as simply being successful, but in my earthly life it’s difficult to think that way. When I was a child, I was always annoyed when someone told me it was the best time of my life, since I wanted to be grown up, wanted something other than the present. If I now look back and ask myself what was the best time of my life, one that immediately occurs to me is the two years when I was in the RAF doing national service. But at the time I again wanted something else: for my national service to be over so I’d be free again. (When I got out, it was one of the most miserable periods in my life.) If we ask ourselves that same question about the best time of our lives, was it some particular time in the past, or are we looking forward to something in the future? How many of us can say the best time in our life is now?—which, after all, is our only current experience."
Post a Comment new!
More Blogs by A. Colin Wright
• Who am I? Who are You? - Wednesday, August 17, 2011
• Sardinia Then and Now - Wednesday, August 17, 2011
• Love Travel? Do it at Someone Else's Expense - Wednesday, August 17, 2011
• What I believe - Thursday, March 03, 2011
• Return from New Zealand - Monday, January 31, 2011
• Allbooks Review Editor's Choice for Sardinian Silver - Sunday, January 02, 2011
• New article on Mikhail Bulgakov - Monday, October 25, 2010
• Rewriting St. John - Wednesday, October 20, 2010
• Mikhail Bulgakov and the Question of Greatness: a Reassessment - Tuesday, September 07, 2010
• literature & Fiction Interviews Volume II - Tuesday, September 07, 2010
• Article soon on the Oberammergau Passion Play - Sunday, June 06, 2010
• Faith, belief and knowledge - Wednesday, March 03, 2010
• Few places to list plays/screenplays - Friday, February 19, 2010
• Generally a difficult time - Friday, January 01, 2010
• Bethlehem (a Christmas story, in two versions) and other stories - Friday, December 18, 2009
• 85 ; 15 - Monday, December 07, 2009
• Time versus Eternity - Wednesday, December 02, 2009
• Hoping to put on more articles - Wednesday, November 11, 2009
• Return from East Africa - Friday, October 09, 2009
• Blogs or articles? And I'm going on holiday. - Monday, September 14, 2009
• More readers' comments invited! - Friday, August 28, 2009
• Chance or Fate? - Tuesday, July 21, 2009
• On Michael Jackson, Celebrities, and becoming Famous - Tuesday, July 14, 2009
• More on what I believe - Wednesday, June 24, 2009
• Writing and what I believe in life - Friday, May 29, 2009
• Likes and Dislikes in Reading - Tuesday, May 19, 2009
• What you can do to help - Tuesday, May 12, 2009
• What happens next? - Sunday, May 03, 2009
• How Sardinian SIlver and other things came to be written. - Tuesday, April 28, 2009
• More on what I want to write about - Tuesday, April 14, 2009
• - Monday, January 01, 1900
|
