Perspective and Character

When all else fades into darkness, it will be one’s character that stays with them for eternity.

Good morning!

Have you ever looked down from a plane?

A change in perspective can often allow us to perceive our situations differently; when we’re up in the sky 30,000 feet above sea level, hills look flat and mountains look like ant-hills.

Inasmuch as a distancing of space gives us perspective and lets us know just how tiny we are in comparison to the vastness of our home planet, eternity likewise acts as a distancing point that can give us perspective about our short stay here.

You see, in the same way that the Earth from Mars’s viewpoint is pretty small, and all distances from any point to any other point on the planet seem insignificant, our lives also seem insignificantly quick and temporary in view of eternity; to even think about life going on after us for tens, hundreds, thousands, and millions of years blows the lids off our minds.

When Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, comments that everything is vanity, he is examining every single individual action from the vantage point of eternity. And you know what? He’s partially right.

A billion years from now, the earth (if it still exists) will be completely unaffected by whether you drive a Tesla or a Hummer; the universe is not going to collapse if you decide to cut that toxic person out of your life; your hobby isn’t going to make stars explode or solar systems spin out of control; your job and your drama and your love life—unless it involves space exploration and/or weapons of mass destruction—will likely have no impact on the future of the universe as a whole.

When you scale out far enough, everything loses its resolution and meaning; what makes a YouTube video clear at a distance of a few feet becomes nothing but obscure pixels when you look at a device from a quarter mile’s distance and becomes but a speck of dust a mile out.

It has been said—and recorded in Scripture—that our lives are like a vapor, here one day and gone the next; when viewed through that lens, everything we do is vain, and we really might as well just eat, drink, and be merry, for that is the reward of our labors (i.e. slaving away at jobs).

However, there’s one addition I would like to make which Solomon might not have known: though our flesh and bones create the illusion that we are nothing but mortal beasts, I believe that our souls will go on to live long after our flesh decays, our immortal spirits continuing to exist forever and ever.

As such, although everything else may be vanity and grasping for the wind, and everything we do could be sensed as meaningless and void of any lasting purpose, I believe that our characters and who we are will remain. What you do for a living, how you look, and even whom you associate with are all subject to change, but at the end of the day, when you go gently into that sweet night, the only thing you’ll be able to carry with you is the character you’ve built: so then, focus on that.

God bless you, have a great day!