The Infinity Dilemma

Infinity is a really long time. A really really long time. As humans, it’s one of those things that we really can’t comprehend. Everything has a start and a finish. We’re born and we die. We build things that we need, and when we don’t need them anymore, we throw them away or get rid of them. Nothing in life as we know it is truly infinite. How do we truly understand infinity?

There is actually a phobia for infinity. It’s called “Apeirophobia.” People who have this try to live their lives as predictably as possible. Infinity isn’t something you normally really talk about, unless you’re a religious person. In Christianity, for example, when you die your soul leaves your body and you merely exist in another realm of existence (a tricky way of saying you go to heaven or hell), and you exist for eternity. Emily Gordon, a writer for rookiemag.com and several other venues, talks about her fear of infinity:

“I thought about forever constantly. I thought about what it might mean, and what heaven and hell might be, and what it meant for something to never, ever end. With grownup eyes, I can see now that my fear was a combination of not being able to process such a lofty concept, plus the sheer unknowability of infinity (the unknown is always very scary). If something starts and doesn’t stop, what would it look like on day 14? Day 992? Day 2,924,728? The same every time? Different? When things are so open-ended, there is no sense of closure and no way of controlling outcomes—and I think that’s ultimately what was so scary to me. Without any control over my own circumstance and fate, I felt like a little insect on a countertop, subject to any and all outside manipulations, unable to do anything but react to what was happening to me. Which is essentially what childhood is like.”

Getting a Grip

It’s interesting to think about eternity in regards to a ring. A ring doesn’t really have a beginning or end, but someone had to make the ring. Rings symbolize so many different things. A wedding ring, for example, symbolizes the continuation of a couples love for each other. It can represent completeness or wholeness. Think about a class ring. Often times, graduating high school seniors will buy a class ring to commemorate their completion of high school, and it will be marked with the year they graduate. A sports team will get rings for winning the Super Bowl or NBA championships.

Trying to understand infinity can be really difficult to do. Instead, maybe focus on what infinity symbolizes and what you can learn from it. We all know who Albert Einstein is, and he gives us some great insight to understanding the whole situation: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”