Jewels in Eternity
Eternity is strewn with jewels
That twinkle briefly in the starlight
And then gone.
Each jewel a brief moment
That is full of life and hope
Then flickers out.
Yet better than the darkness,
Preferable to nothing at all,
For we have our moment.
For we are those jewels
So full of hope and love
That shine so briefly in the dark.
Each one of us so full of joy
That put the stars to shame
Through our dreaming.
We must shine with all our strength
For that brief moment
Is all we have.
And it is enough
To know
That we have shined too.
Opher 5.7.2016
Jewels in Eternity
I had this feeling that eternity was nothing more than endless darkness. Even the brightness of the big bang and the coming to life of the stars would be darkness if there were no eyes to witness it or no brains to appreciate the splendour.
In order for there to be light there has to be the consciousness with which to see or else the brightest light is still in darkness.
Consciousness evolved out of the slime over billions of years, just as it took tens of billions of years for the stars to emerge from the cosmic gas cloud.
The stars will shine and shed their light for hundreds of billions of years to come. Will there be eyes to see them? Or brains to glory in their majesty?
In the span of eternity maybe the life of a universe is a mere sentence, the life of a galaxy a brief flash, and the whole of human history a moment.
Perhaps there are multitudes of conscious beings scattered throughout the universe with senses to see and brains that light their consciousness up with joy.
I imagined those bursts of consciousness to be jewels that briefly shone within the darkness; each had its vain moment of glory and was gone.
Each of us a jewel in the darkness whose purpose is to shine with all the force we can muster.