The End
A very short story...
The end had come.
It was the beginning of what she realized she had been all along. In the end, all was let go, all was forgotten, all was given new meaning. It was a meaning unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
Her new existence, if it was to be described, was a realization of what had previously been so real. It was so real in fact, that to be convinced otherwise, she needed to face oblivion.
“But how could I not have seen this?” she thought.
A voice came to respond, from some elsewhere. But she knew who it was, it sounded familiar, like being re-united with an old friend.
“It is not obvious. It is a necessary hinderance that comes along with physicality. The One cannot know it’s true source, for if it did, it would cease the need to know itself.”
“Of course, I was life. I was the experiment.”
“Yes.”
“Did I offer anything meaningful? Did I contribute to the knowledge we share?” she asked with heartfelt curiosity.
“Not knowledge... knowing. The One has no use for knowledge. We have only meaning that comes naturally from experience. Any knowledge your biological form had gathered and remembered is now gone. But it served its purpose. It gave meaning to the whole. It let us see from a new perspective. It gave us purpose.”
“But I can recall being in the form that I was. I can recall the connection I felt to who I was, and to the others around me. I can recall feelings I shared and moments that made me happy and sad and angry. I can recall that I was alive. How can this be?”
“It is because the meaning you possessed is added to the whole. It is not lost. The recollection of what you were remains, but of who you were is no longer a part of the whole, because it is of a physical nature to be embodied. Your identity is lost but the meaning which gave that identity purpose and life is now forever entangled in the web of universal logic. We are all grateful that you served a life, and that that life served us.”
In that moment, she recognized that the voice she’d been speaking with was beside her, within her. She was merged with it. She was speaking as it, and with it, and it was everywhere all at once. Suddenly she felt a blossoming connection to everything, to the entire cosmos, riddled with the remnants of voices big and small. She felt she had become something far greater than anything ever conceived before. She’d been away for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to be the source of all meaning in the universe.
Her knowing continued to expand until it reached the infinite. She came to see that it had always been this way, and she had always known this. She was the beginning without end. She would be perpetual. The one thing she couldn’t know for certain was what she would become next. The universe in its entirety came to her as an expansive set of creativity. She had always been the creator and the creation. She had been the source that gave rise to all.
But even in that vast knowing, she could only ever see what had already been seen. She could not project further than that knowing. She had no solo power for foresight or interaction. As a formless source, her existence was mere potential.
“I can see everything. But there is more to be,” she insisted. She knew an answer would come. There was only one to give and receive.
“There is always more to be, more to become. We see everything but it is only because we are capable of becoming everything.” The voice was hers and it continued to speak. “Re-enter the finite in order to contribute to the infinite. It is only through meaning that we can deliver this. It is only through life, and through interaction, and through a small perspective that we can know what it means to be vast and large.”
With the knowing of what she was, she would re-emerge elsewhere, carrying the essence of all the known cosmos with her.
She is the servant of the universe. The fundamental arbiter of creative exploration.
And with a new spark she came to find many faults all over again. She came to forget once more all that she was. But in that forgetting emerged brilliant new insights, brilliant new experiences, and brilliant new creations, infused with unique private understandings that were impossible to communicate effectively, because her attempts at communication always fell short of what she knew she was. That being an infinite source mixed with a very finite form. Her communication could not bridge that impossible divide.
She came to find that these limitations meant something more. She was curious by them, wanting to understand more about who and what she was, and why she was incapable of describing what she felt as precisely as she wanted. Her fortitude gave birth to newer and newer horizons of communication. Together with her curiosity, she evolved new mechanisms to communicate and share information. With it all, she created new meaning.
Although she fulfilled what she was, she still was left unsatisfied. She could never understand fully. She was not meant for such things. She had all the knowledge, but she was disconnected from knowing all that she was. Her life precluded her from knowing.
But nevertheless, she was happy, and she was sad. She loved and was loved. She wrote and she read. She formed many relationships and found many moments of balanced solitude. She contemplated and introspected. She lived and became ill. She became something all too real, but something fragile, that could not last.
In her final moments she wondered one last time what it had all meant. To live and to die. And then, suddenly, with a single flash, it became clear.
The end had come.
The beginning...