Time Goes On

Brian's Nana died on Wednesday. She had a "long" life, and is now dead. She died in a small room facing the place where I work in the hospital, the room with the closed curtains pictured below. Those curtains were open a few hours earlier, opened onto blue sky, onto sounds of doctors, nurses and students walking by, talking, laughing, rushing on to one place or another. Now the curtains are closed onto blue sky, onto sounds of doctors, nurses and students walking by, talking, laughing, rushing on to one place or another. And in another part of the same building, a baby is being born, and parents feel a crushing, overwhelming joy.

So it goes.

"Imagine the earth - 4 600 hundred million years old -– is a 46-year-old woman" suggests Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things. "It has taken the whole of the Earth Woman'’s life to become what it is. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise."

"The Earth Woman was 11 when the first single-celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only when she was 40. She was over 45 -– just eight months ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth. "

"The whole of human civilisation as we know it began only two hours ago in the Earth Woman'’s life."

Only two hours ago. We've not even been here a day. How insignificant our species is, and how much more so the individuals of that species - me and you - whose lifespan is a blink of the planets eye. Yet how much damage our species has done in such a short time - over the last two hundred years, two blinks of an earth-eye - to its home! If, as Vonnegut suggests, viruses may be (part of) an immune response by our planet to rid itself of us...in the planet's eyes, maybe we're the viruses, they're the immune system, the white blood cells. We're certainly acting like viruses (Gaian theory may hold some weight here). So H5N1's been confirmed in Scotland. The planets immune system is readying itself incredibly quickly, building up stores of its own white blood cells, throughout its body, in preparation for the attack, the ever so recent attack, on itself. Maybe before the day is out, there will be no more danger from any man, for all men will be gone.

I used to think that, even though individuals of a species (an oak tree, a man) may die, representatives of species (oak trees, man) would always live on. But given that 99.9% of all the species that have ever lived no longer exist, why need we think that any special case applies to mankind (or to oak trees)? In fact, if a species ever needed eradicating for the benefit of all others, isn't it ours? So I think that I'm special, as did Brians Nana no doubt, as does Brian, as does everyone? I think our thoughts are lighter things than even our unbearably light lives.

In the video below (the second part of which is here) Michio Kaku gives us another useful metaphor to use in our attempting to comprehend our smallness. All things considered, I don't think the expression "Life goes on" can really mean anything in our world. Life doesn't go on. Time goes on.