the_direction_of_forever ovenbird Forever is a concept that gets bandied about, but it’s rarely taken seriously. Humans can imagine forever. We understand, theoretically, that time is infinite, at least as it travels into the future. Time is not infinite into the past. It began. There was nothing. Then: BANG. Time. But we’re uncertain even about this. Some theorize that time could end. A singularity. The Big Crunch. Time could lose all meaning. So when we say “forever” we mean the forever of our own conscious experience, or we mean forever as limited by the mortality of those around us. I will love my children until I am incapable of doing so. That is the best I can do in relation to forever. It’s the most that I can promise. I would like to love them beyond death, and if I find there’s something for the soul to experience when the body is dust, I hope that love is what’s left. But no one can promise that kind of forever and we fall spectacularly short of even our mortal forevers as we stumble our way through our eight or so decades of living. There are so many variables. Forever is ruined by death and betrayal and distance and illness and boredom and lust. It’s cracked by legitimate concerns that require a renegotiation and a release from the intention of forever, and also by things that might be repaired, but aren’t. Forever is eroded by all the ways we humans struggle to retain interest in things and people. We live in a disposable culture where we are encouraged not to repair what is ours. When things break we throw them out and get a new one. They’re designed that way. A lot of things aren’t even capable of being repaired. This philosophy bleeds into relationships. How quick we are to believe there’s nothing worth saving while at the same time being prone to holding on too long. Sometimes we need to retract forever from someone else to preserve our own future. We’re confusing creatures, humans. But the fact is that we can’t promise forever, we can only promise to move in that direction. We have too little control over all the ways forever can be ripped out from under us. And I wonder what would shift if we saw forever as an active process of engagement rather than a destination. What if we said, “I will love you in the direction of forever.” Meaning that we will keep our eyes on that unreachable horizon of forever that always sits at a distance from us. Meaning that we will align our intentions, like a compass, with the magnetic fields of forever that pull us along until we discover the outer limits of our finite natures. Meaning, we will keep travelling together until travel becomes impossible, for reasons of the heart or reasons of the body or reasons of unexpected interference that we never could have predicted. In this kind of forever we would expect struggles and challenges and the need to sit down to catch our breath. We would understand that forever can’t happen passively, it’s something we need to craft and map and explore with deep curiosity and a willingness to make mistakes. Some forevers are easier than others. I will walk in the direction of forever with my dog until his brief life ends. I will walk with my children until mine ends (please let this be the way things go). I have no choice but to walk with the body I’ve been given until my own forever ceases. Other forevers are harder. Friendships, family relationships, romances, marriages. Sometimes forever becomes untenable. Sometimes we injure ourselves on the sharp edge of forever. Sometimes we get tired and can’t go on. And sometimes we keep finding the path forward, even in the most overgrown wilderness. Sometimes we move slowly and carefully and manage, miraculously, to pick out the next blaze every time. And we keep walking in the direction of forever until forever itself is no longer there to be found and we walk off the end of the earth to a place where time ceases or, just maybe, to a place where forever is all there is. 251124 what's it to you? who go blather from