4eva

As a child, my first exposure to the concept of infinity did not relate to math, but faith. Crunching on the idea of an afterlife spent in heaven, I asked how long we would live there. Forever. A lot of daydream time was spent wrestling with that. First, I felt mild anger at the idea I could never leave heaven. As a child, I hated the idea of being stuck anywhere overlong and I didn't think heaven was like languishing bored at some church social, trying to find amusement with the little kids without getting scolded for making them cry. Beyond that, the idea of never-ending spun me. Thinking of it made me dizzy and sick. I couldn't fathom forever.

But I was always drawn back to the concept to grapple and spin out. I learned how to make a mobius loop with a strip of paper and traced the unending spiral with a magic marker. Infinity became a concept in my science fiction novels, attached itself to mathematics, and gradually tempered beneath reason and use.

The week before I left Ohio, I tread the awareness of an unending unknown. My life to date was about to end and the afterlife would be something I could not possibly conceive of. I get these flashes now, since that time of delirious joy and anticipation, of how unbound I really am. I step aside from my day-to-day tedium, the banked anxiety, a hard drive full of old mental programming, and I see the infinite potential of my life. There are no barriers. I am boundless and free.

Heaven is me. I am infinite.

I carry this knowledge with me everywhere I go, and the world doesn't sting like it used to. I'm not helplessly stuck somewhere forever. I don't have to give up on my dreams just to survive. And the place I am now, I chose to be in. I can go anywhere I want.

This is my justification, btw, for leaving work early.