Life is Terminal

Here on Earth, on Friday, April 21, 2023, at around 9 am edt, in the US of A, as determined by conventional, political standards of measuring space and time, I’m contemplating the belief in death.

This belief is conventional among some human cultures and individuals, but a belief in re-incarnation after death also exists. Some religions promulgate the idea that death represents a transformation of the being’s basic essence to another plane of reality, a “heaven” or a “hell” and various extra-spatial locales designated for those who hold certain beliefs.

But so far as we know in the Now, our physical bodies are destined to wear out, sooner or later, and the physical remains will decompose to their most basic components.

No one really knows what happens to the individuality that animated the living body, even though religion, myth, and philosophy claim special insight. None can say how they know what they claim to know.

My philosophy, encapsulated in my novel of imagination, rests with Beon, the protagonist, who is consciously immortal, beyond death, and must adapt to the rules of a time-enclosed universe. 4-D circumscribes space and time within limits created by human beliefs about life.

Life is terminal, in 4-D reality, and the only real “cause of death” is time, despite claims by those who blame this or that person, circumstance, disease, war, or actions by others. “His time was up.”

What would an entity like Beon do, if he had an eternity at his disposal? In “A Matter of Time” Beon must learn patience with time, since he finds himself trapped in 4-D through a failed suicide attempt, through a solipsistic belief in his ability to extinguish life.