The meaning of oblivion is the state of being completely forgotten by everyone.
Consider Ratan Tata. He has no children of his own. Who is he going to leave all the wealth for? I hope that, despite his wealth and prosperity, he makes time to live for himself. Sure, everyone will remember him for a long time, but does that remembrance after his death help him now in this real, living life in any way?
If someone is more popular than others, they may be remembered for some more time. Many others will be consigned to oblivion soon after their death. There are people who create things for humanity to function more properly. They invent things, but they don't realise how their inventions are going to be used by humans. Like Pierre Curie and Marie Curie invented radium and their research on radiation helped the invention of the atomic bomb that destroyed two cities. They wanted to change the world in a positive way, but they were oblivious to the fact that they would be indirectly responsible for the killing of so many people. If we think about a simple example of people who plant trees in their old age for the fruits to be borne for the next generation or to help purify the air. That person is oblivious to what happens to the tree. Maybe future generations are just going to cut them down.
In the novel The Fault in Our Stars by John Greene, when asked what they fear the most, Augustus says he fears oblivion. To this, Hazel says, "There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten, and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon, and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does. "
People always have to win; be it in work, education, or even arguments. They always think of themselves as smarter, greater beings. Egos touch the sky, but they don't realise that the sky is so big that it can contain all of the world's egos without twinching. The sky, the universe, makes us feel like an infinitesimally smaller being. We are smaller than a grain of sand. Our existence does not make a difference to the universe, not even in the slightest way. We may cease to exist today and not make any difference whatsover. Can you find any better reason to stay grounded? If this does not, what else will? The universe is so big that none of us can even fathom its vastness.
I think about random things like, if the earth is in the same position every year on our birthdays. I was told by my deep thinker buddies that no thought is stupid. Everything makes sense. Every theory that our over-thinking minds make and every question that our heads ask makes sense. I had a vivid day dream that when I was climbing a hill, I saw something, like a huge shadow. The shadow spoke to me. They instructed me to make one wish. I said I wanted to know about the secrets of the universe. That is my wish. I want answers to my questions, which Stephan Hawking tried to explain in his Theory of Everything. I want to know everything from the centre of the universe (wherever that may be) to the end of it (if it has an end). I want to imagine that my wish was granted. I know everything now, from the beginning to the end. The existence and the extinction. The Life and Death. Life in every form, in every dimension. What now? Now that I am omniscient, what is next? What will be the purpose of my life? Even now, I am figuring out the purpose of my life, universe, etc. and even after knowing everything, I would be doing the same thing, maybe not. I will never know.
In the sci-fi novel A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the deep computer took 7.5 million years to calculate an answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. It was the number 42. The computer did not know what the question was, so it invented another computer and named it Earth. Even though the author claims there is no specific reason as to why he chose 42, there have been a number of theories.
Not knowing is fun in a way. It is what keeps us going. As Delilah Gates says in The Trip to Infinity, "Not knowing does not make me sad. As a scientist, for me not knowing is exciting?"
We are here for a short time. Whatever we do in this life will be forgotten at some point in time. We all die eventually, not knowing what the future might be without us in it. In this life that we have, we make money our whole life, run after things we do not need, cry after situations that do not matter. In the end, everything blends into the same soil, the same atmosphere, and a cosmos so vast that our existence appears meaningless.
Oblivion is inevitable. The answer to an afterlife is as delusive as a God.
Published on www.medium.com
