What's a billion years really anyway?
Rather than being paralyzed by the incomprehensible scale of cosmic time, we should embrace and find meaning in our fleeting human lifespan.
On a long-enough timeline, none of this matters.
I’ll die. You’ll die. So will everyone we love and everyone we could ever dream of.
At some point, humanity as a whole will end itself. Or, best case scenario, our time will come to an end in a few billion years when the sun explodes and makes life on this earth an impossibility.
Through this lens, you could echo the point of this post’s opening line: None of this matters. You could take that angle and be right and righteous in your stance.
But I don’t see the point in that, because I can’t even fathom a billion years. Intellectually, yes, I understand. A billion is a 1 followed by a bunch of zeroes and a few commas. But emotionally, I can’t process a billion.
A billion means nothing to me.
No matter our desires, we’re not here for a long time, but some of us are lucky to have the chance to be here for a good time, if we play our cards right.
But the window for the good times is closing.
Every.
Single.
Day.
Why should we worry about the perception or meaning of a date we can’t even comprehend?
Far better, I think, to focus on the time we can comprehend—the few decades, at best, that we have left.
That’s a timeframe we can all work with, and so, it’s the timeframe we should work with.
Goodbye. Adios. Adieu.
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