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Original poster

To feel terrified by the idea of time going on forever

88 replies

Lavenderfarmcottage · 02/11/2024 15:23

I recently lost someone close to me and I feel that she’s in heaven or a better place. I find it incredibly difficult to believe she isn’t. However, ever since I was very young, the idea of heaven just going on and on and on with no end has terrified me and I have to stop thinking about it whenever it occurs to me, such is the uncomfortable gut feeling it gives me. I don’t know why this is but it just does. I feel also scared about the alternative that life just ends. Does anyone feel similarly and has anyone been able to soothe this fear with any sort of comforting ideas ?

OP posts:
lollypopsforme · 02/11/2024 19:05

We live we die we get reborn and start again in a new setting well thats how i like to think of it.

Original poster
Lavenderfarmcottage · 03/11/2024 02:43

Waitingfordoggo · 02/11/2024 18:07

This has definitely been shared on MN before- I’m sure the first time I saw it was here- but I don’t think anyone has shared it on this thread.

Anyway, for the agnostics/atheists among us, this can bring a lot of comfort I think (sorry, it’s quite long- but worth it!):

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time.

You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.”

Aaron Freeman

Thank you, this is truly brilliant.

OP posts:
Butchyrestingface · 03/11/2024 05:44

I know what you mean, OP. I find the idea of eternal life depressing and terrifying. By the time I’d reached my late teens, I realised I preferred the idea of complete annihilation.

Downunderduchess · 03/11/2024 05:55

No one really knows what happens, so in a sense you can make it anything that feels right to you and brings you comfort.

Mumof2namechange · 03/11/2024 06:13

Downunderduchess · 03/11/2024 05:55

No one really knows what happens, so in a sense you can make it anything that feels right to you and brings you comfort.

I agree with this - unfortunately I haven't found a narrative that makes sense for me yet. This thread has some great ideas though.

At least, I did used to feel I had. But then I got completely shaken up and haven't found my conviction again. I guess this is what they used to call a crisis of faith. It's left me terrified of death, I think about it almost everyday (although more briefly than I used to)

BertieBotts · 03/11/2024 07:02

T4phage · 02/11/2024 15:36

When ds1 was young he once asked me about what do people do in heaven. He has adhd and was worried that he'd get bored.

Hilarious, that's how I've always seen it too 😂 (I also have ADHD)

BertieBotts · 03/11/2024 07:02

OP I think this is what they call Existential Dread.

echt · 03/11/2024 07:06

In one of his programmes, Brian Cox talks about time and the persistence of what's left of us. He is more cogent than the funeral physicist. I found it truly affecting but can't place it.

Anyone?

Singalongsue · 03/11/2024 07:31

I used to find comfort in the thought that there was nothing after you die, just non existence like before you were born but then I’ve read about peoples near death experiences where they’ve had an out of body experience and can give facts about what they saw which are verified and couldn’t have been otherwise known. Now I worry about the unknown and hope that it’s good and peaceful

ClytemnestraWasMisunderstood · 03/11/2024 07:35

Dead is dead

dayswithaY · 03/11/2024 07:42

The way I see it, we don’t ask to be born. We are all just dumped here and have to get on with it for a certain amount of time until it’s over. Everything we do is just marking time up until that point.

It’s a shame that we have to spend this time going to work, to earn money to pay for a brick structure to live in and food to eat, but it doesn’t really matter how you fill your time here it’s all just temporary.

I read somewhere that everything you own now will eventually end up in landfill.

I think the idea of heaven was invented to make people behave and obey rules or risk going to hell instead.

Heaven doesn’t really make sense on any level.

We’re all just passing through this life.

Somehowgirl · 03/11/2024 08:28

I think heaven is just a human metaphor for oblivion. There is no bliss like the bliss of oblivion. Of non-existence. We can't put that into words so we talk about heaven. Your consciousness, if you have any after death, will not bear any resemblance whatsoever to your consciousness now. There would be no physical, sense-based, language-based experience of what's happening. You will have transcended. We cannot yet understand that.

Hatfullofwillow · 03/11/2024 09:00

Sounds a bit like existential ocd. I'm not religious, but after the death of my parents, I got some comfort from block theory, that time happened all at once. We're just experiencing it as the present.

So in my mind, somewhere in time, every happy memory I have is being experienced by the people I miss. Essentially, All moments that exist are just relative to each other within the three spacial dimensions and one time dimension. Our sense of the present is just reflecting where in the block universe we are at that instance.

I avoid thinking about the fact this also means everything horrible that's ever happened is also being experienced.

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