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The sinless paradise of stolen joys,
Is it already far beyond the seas?
Can we recall it with our plaintive voice,
And give it life with silver melodies,
The sinless paradise of stolen joys?
Is it already far beyond the seas?
Can we recall it with our plaintive voice,
And give it life with silver melodies,
The sinless paradise of stolen joys?
We will describe how M-theory may offer answers to the question of creation. According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. They are a prediction of science. Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is, at times like the present, long after their creation. Most of these states will be quite unlike the universe we observe and quite unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Thus our presence selects out from this vast array only those universes that are compatible with our existence. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.
My surname's very unusual, but I don't know its literal meaning. If anybody knows, please tell me. It's not important to me, though, because what's important is how somebody made life's journey, not what their surname is.
At heart, though, God is all about death. The other issues are spin-offs. The organisation of life into story, the ascription to it of meaning, the heart's cry for an eternal parent protector figure, all these wouldn't be so necessary if we never died, or if, like animals, we didn't know we die. Death doesn't create these needs in and of itself. An endpoint itself is not the issue. Oblivion is the issue. Nothingness is the issue.
Yet, I have never kept a diary. Or I have tried, but it never stuck. Again and again I would begin: with a very short entry, or else with a long one that would come to stand on its own, there in the beginning of a notebook, followed by all of those blank pages. I don't know if, when I wrote essays, I was actually returning to the same space, if somehow I had managed to get back to those empty pages, managed to get back to a pasture of thought. And now that it is done, I am keeping a real diary for the first time in my life, or is it a pasture, mostly because when I can't, or don't have time, to work on my novel, I can still write there. Sometimes I trick myself when writing in my notebook; sometimes I end up working on the novel after all, in those pages. And that is the best reason to return to it, that it brings me closer to something I haven't otherwise been able to get to, or that can't get to me. I want to go further into my writing, into my thinking. "And do I?"
And so into the past I went. I found a time not unlike our own—full of chaos, war, plagues, pestilence, treachery, corruption, anxiety, overindulgence and fear of a climate apocalypse. Those times were populated by people questing for the answers that we crave today. In ancient Stoicism I found people, just like us, longing to find meaning and connection, to feel whole and tranquil, to love and be loved, to have a harmonious family life, fulfilling and meaningful work, intimate and nourishing friendships, a sense of contributing to your community, belonging to something greater than yourself, a wonder at the natural world, flashes of deep awe, a head full of questions about how it all came to be, and, finally, coming to terms with letting it all go—at some point, not of your choosing.
