One life - a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.
- Thomas Carlyle
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Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
- Thomas Carlyle
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. -Vladimir Nabokov
Last Friday, I posed a question to you, and you kindly responded by voting as to whether, when you crossed the event horizon of a black…
This time around, we're talking to Carl Zimmer of The Loom.
What's your name?
Carl Zimmer
What do you do when you're not blogging?
Write magazine articles, books, and various other pieces of dead-tree media. Or investigate anthills with my daughters.
What is your blog called?
The Loom
What's up…
Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal
(repost)
This quote is vague about afterlife or the existence of a "soul" in any form outside of the years when we are alive.
It is also analagous to the frequently quoted saying of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: "All the world is a narrow bridge. But the essential principle is to fear nothing at all.".
Both tell us life is the precious blip in an otherwise blank infinity of time, it is to be lived fully. As long as you are not specific about what distiguishes the moments of life from the vastly greater moments without it, you can find the idea in most relgions. One Christian Science author called it "A parenthesis in eternity", the Persians put it in a folk expression "the world is two days: today and yesterday". and so on.
The "wise saw" is definitely a two edged sword: a worthy aphorism can be adapted by each who hears it to fit and benefit their particular conception of life.
[Did you expect much response to this post, Bora?]
I am always surprised when someone posts a comment on one of the ClockQuotes posts! But those are usually good and useful!