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Everything passes
May. 21st, 2008 11:39 amOOC: Posted to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse, today.
Prompt 231: "Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." Haruki Murakami.
I would say that this is mostly accurate whether you're mortal or immortal.
Everything in the universe is finite. Stars burn out, planets blow up, species evolve or die out. Mortals can possess something that lasts longer than they do, only because they themselves are so short-lived and fragile. Immortals, however, watch everything that isn't themselves or their fellows collapse or fade to dust.
And you cannot "have" another immortal. You can have a relationship with them, but that too changes over time. Aeons pass, and lovers become enemies, or worse, the bonds between you fade into indifference. Others that you were indifferent to once become your new friends or your new loves. No relationship stays the same.
It may not even be accurate to say that if you are immortal you have yourself forever. Who *you* are changes as well. And the act of not changing is itself a kind of death, so if you managed to have everything for eternity the *meaning*, the value of it would decrease to nothing, leaving you with effectively nothing even though none of it actually died or was lost.
It rather surprises me that a mortal came up with this quote, actually. Plenty of mortals have lived their entire existences in the same building, in the same town, surrounded by mostly the same people, with largely the same possessions. They get away with it because they die, but for any of us, mortal or immortal, a lifetime is all you get. Eternity is meaningless if you yourself aren't around to see it; all the time that is important to the individual is the time we are alive. So mortals *do* get to have things for "keeps", if by that you mean they get to keep them their whole lives, or even their whole lives and the whole lives of all the younger people they know. Of course, mortals who get to do such things usually live lives constrained horribly by hidebound traditions and stultifying stagnation; mortals with *interesting* lives rarely get to keep anything their entire life.
theatrical_muse, today.Prompt 231: "Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." Haruki Murakami.
I would say that this is mostly accurate whether you're mortal or immortal.
Everything in the universe is finite. Stars burn out, planets blow up, species evolve or die out. Mortals can possess something that lasts longer than they do, only because they themselves are so short-lived and fragile. Immortals, however, watch everything that isn't themselves or their fellows collapse or fade to dust.
And you cannot "have" another immortal. You can have a relationship with them, but that too changes over time. Aeons pass, and lovers become enemies, or worse, the bonds between you fade into indifference. Others that you were indifferent to once become your new friends or your new loves. No relationship stays the same.
It may not even be accurate to say that if you are immortal you have yourself forever. Who *you* are changes as well. And the act of not changing is itself a kind of death, so if you managed to have everything for eternity the *meaning*, the value of it would decrease to nothing, leaving you with effectively nothing even though none of it actually died or was lost.
It rather surprises me that a mortal came up with this quote, actually. Plenty of mortals have lived their entire existences in the same building, in the same town, surrounded by mostly the same people, with largely the same possessions. They get away with it because they die, but for any of us, mortal or immortal, a lifetime is all you get. Eternity is meaningless if you yourself aren't around to see it; all the time that is important to the individual is the time we are alive. So mortals *do* get to have things for "keeps", if by that you mean they get to keep them their whole lives, or even their whole lives and the whole lives of all the younger people they know. Of course, mortals who get to do such things usually live lives constrained horribly by hidebound traditions and stultifying stagnation; mortals with *interesting* lives rarely get to keep anything their entire life.