Semana 9 - Infinito

I’m sitting in front of a sheet of paper with one goal, to write about infinite. 

After quite a big amount of time just looking out the window thinking on absolutely nothing and just being absorbed by the music playing in the background I start where I usually like to initiate things, from a definition. And therefore I try to define infinite. I would say it is a property of things which makes them perpetuate in time, never-ending, always present, no matter what. 

I go and compare it with a brief online search: infinite can be defined as something which cannot be measured, something with no end, limitless. I like this definition, I’ll keep it. 

Now, I would like to see if I could find some examples of infiniteness in the physical world within my narrow span of life experience.

I’ll start in nature, because it’s the most powerful thing I know. So I look again out the window and I see a beautiful tree. It seems relatively young, but magnificent still. I think then about the process that led it to this precise moment. Long time has passed since it consisted only on a vulnerable seed and long time will pass until it dries out completely, lifeless. It is surrounded with limits. However if I think about the process which originated this tree, the ones present before her and the ones after, I could almost argue that the process itself is infinite. As long as there is soil, air, nutrients, sunlight and all the conditions which make its life possible, its a never-ending cycle. Nevertheless many millennia before this seemingly infinite process has started, I would say a boundary can be drawn which separates the moment before and after it existed life on this planet. The same will surely happen when life as we know it ceases to exist. It is fun to think about it, but surely not infinite. 

Again within my limited experience, I was lucky to hear about infinite in mathematics. I still have very well present in my mind that when dividing any number by zero it results in an indetermination, something which cannot be measured, infinite. Even though the beauty of mathematics is almost unarguable and it can be found and explain many phenomena in nature, I couldn’t unfortunately go much further in this topic, limiting myself to the simple recognition of its existence. If infinite exists, it is here. 

Thinking now on something completely different. Could infinite perhaps be observed in feelings or emotions? I surely notice a difference in the experience of time according with my feelings, sometimes something very short in time could seem to last almost eternity and the same otherwise.

I’m on top of a hard surface, my hands hold it vigorously. We’re moving at high speed, floating on a beautiful mass of salty water. Bright tones of dark greenish-blue move rapidly below my feet and I feel I’m in an unsteady equilibrium, momentarily. I have nothing but air behind me but I lean backwards anyway, seizing the balanced instability. I feel and hear the water and the wind, I look up and I see the mountains at distance. I feel a balloon of hot air inside me which brings me joy and warmness despite the coldness of the surroundings.

This memory for example, started with an experience, generated a feeling and was stored in a memory, which will last forever I hope. Forever until I die, therefore well limited. Even though emotions and memories can have an impact on experiencing time, they’re surely not infinite either. 

Not having much more to add to this infinite-searching quest, I'll leave myself as I was before, for me there are infinite issues that describe and command life as I know it and it is way outside my capabilities to try and explain or understand even a single tiny percentage of them. Therefore, maybe living with the certainty that life is limited, one has certainly enough material to explore on the route.