The Journey to Eternity — Chapter Three — The River That Does Not Stop
The Journey to Eternity · A serialized book by Nurit Rozenblat
↑ Book index · עברית · ← Chapter Two — The Guardian of the Tree · Chapter Four — What Remains Within Us →
Chapter Three — The River That Does Not Stop
I woke to a sound I did not know.
At first I thought someone was playing a flute in the distance, but when I listened closely I understood the sounds were coming from several directions. They blended into one another, separated and joined again, as if a conversation were taking place around me in a language I do not know.
I opened my eyes.
A soft light filled the room. It was not the sunlight I know, but a light that shifted gently between shades of gold, pink and pale blue.
I sat up and looked toward the opening.
For a moment I forgot where I was.
Beyond it spread a world that looked as if it had been taken from a fairy tale.
The trees were tall and full of foliage in shades I had not known exist in nature. Deep green blended with blue; in some leaves golden veins appeared, and others were half transparent, so the light passed through them and lit the branches beneath.
I went outside.
The ground was covered with flowers. Some were small and delicate, others larger than my palm. There were flowers whose petals changed colors with the movement of the wind, and flowers that leaned toward one another as if responding to the presence of their neighbors.
I bent beside a purple flower, at whose center tiny points sparkled.
When I brought my hand near it, the petals opened a little more.
I tried again.
This time they closed slowly.
I smiled.
I did not know whether it was responding to the warmth of my body, to movement, or to something else entirely.
Above me flew large butterflies. Their wings were transparent at the edges, and at their centers appeared colorful patterns that changed each time they tilted their bodies. One of them passed so close to my face that I felt a light stir of air.
I raised my gaze to the sky.
It too was different.
The blue was deep and bright, and in the distance layers of lilac and gold could be seen. The clouds were not white. Some were pink, others a shade of peach, and one especially large one looked as if blue light moved within it.
I stood for a long time and observed.
I thought of all the times I had looked at the sky at home and seen in it only a background to the day about to begin. How much beauty exists around us in the familiar world too, and how quickly we grow used to it until we no longer notice it.
A small bird with turquoise feathers landed on a nearby branch. After it appeared another bird, yellow with a long purple tail. They exchanged a series of sounds, then flew off together.
I listened.
I was not sure whether they were singing or conversing.
I felt a strong desire to stay in place and examine every flower, every leaf and every creature. But then I heard a familiar voice.
"Did you sleep well?"
The silver bird stood on a branch above me.
"Yes," I replied. "I think I have not slept like that in years."
She looked at me.
"And what was the first thing you felt when you woke?"
I thought for a moment.
"That I want to see everything."
"And the second thing?"
"That I will not have enough time."
The bird was silent.
Only then did I notice the words I had said.
I stood in a world I knew nothing about, surrounded by beauty I had never seen, and already I feared I would not manage to know it.
"Interesting," I said quietly. "Even here I think about time."
"Perhaps because you still do not know what it is."
I looked at her.
"I know what time is. At least I thought I knew."
"If so, can you explain it to me?"
I opened my mouth, but struggled to find an answer.
"Time is… what passes. The hours, the days, the years. The way in which things change."
"And what passes?"
"Time."
"Do you see it pass?"
"I see its results."
"If so, perhaps you should meet someone who can help you distinguish between them."
The bird spread her wings.
"Come."
I followed her along a narrow path that wound between the flowers.
Every few steps I discovered something new. Bushes bearing tiny fruits in the shape of stars, leaves that moved without wind, and birds that left behind colorful flickers that vanished a moment later.
But more than anything, the clouds drew my attention.
They moved across the sky in different directions, some slowly and some quickly, as if the wind did not affect them all in the same way.
One of them changed its shape before my eyes. At first it looked like a mountain, then like a great wing, and at last it scattered into thin strips.
I kept watching it until I nearly stumbled over a root.
I lowered my eyes to the path.
My body reminded me again that even in a wondrous world one must mind where one steps.
After a while I heard flowing water.
The sound grew stronger as we approached, until the trees opened and before me a wide river was revealed.
Its waters were clear, but not entirely transparent. Within them moved shades of blue, silver and deep green. Along the banks grew tall flowers, and butterflies hovered above the surface of the water.
In the middle of the river stood large stones, smooth and round, and on one of them sat a figure.
From afar she appeared human.
As I came closer I noticed I had no way to determine her age. Her face was young and ancient at one and the same time. Her long hair was silver, but in its movement appeared dark and light shades, as if it changed with the light.
She sat barefoot, her feet touching the water.
The bird landed on a branch above the bank.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"The Entity of Time."
I looked at the figure again.
"Time is an entity?"
"Here you will be able to converse with it."
The figure raised her head.
"And I hope," she said in a quiet voice, "that it will be an interesting conversation."
I approached the river's edge.
"I do not know how to address you."
"In any way you choose. Names matter more to you than they do to me."
"So you are Time?"
"I am one of the ways in which you can understand it."
I looked at the water.
"And why do you sit specifically in a river?"
"Because you love to liken me to a stream."
"That is truly a fitting image. The river advances and does not return."
The entity looked at me.
"Are you sure?"
"The water flows in one direction."
"But the water you see now is not the water you saw a moment ago. And still, you call both the same river."
I gazed at the current.
"Because the river is not only the water. It is also the place in which they flow."
"Beautiful. And now think of yourself."
I raised my eyes to her.
"What is the connection?"
"Your body is not the same body you had in your childhood. Your thoughts have changed, your knowledge has widened, some of your memories have weakened and others have been added. And still, you say you are the same woman."
I was silent.
"So what remains constant?" she asked.
I thought of the child I was, of the young woman, of all the versions of myself I have known over the years.
"I do not know," I admitted. "There is in me a feeling of continuity. I remember that I was all of those women."
"And if you were to lose the memories?"
The question troubled me.
"I would still exist. But perhaps I would not know who I was."
"If so, is your identity in the memory, in the body, or in the one who experiences both?"
I looked at the water.
I had no answer.
The entity placed her palm on the surface of the river.
Around it circles formed, expanding slowly.
"Human beings relate to time as if it were something in their possession. You say you have time, that you have no time, that you waste it or save it. But can one hold a moment?"
"No."
"Can one keep it for tomorrow?"
"No."
"Then what do you truly waste?"
I thought of the many hours I spent in worries, of things I postponed and of days that passed without my remembering anything of them.
"Perhaps the opportunity to experience the moment," I said.
"And perhaps also the possibility of choosing what to do within it."
She raised her hand from the water.
"Time is not property. It is the condition within which the changes you know take place. You cannot store it. You can only decide how to live in the time at your disposal."
I sat on a stone beside the bank.
"But time really is limited for us."
"Your lives inside the body are limited. That is not exactly the same thing."
"To us it feels like the same thing."
"Because you measure time through yourselves."
I looked at her.
"How else can it be measured?"
The entity pointed to a tree growing across the river.
"That tree existed before you came here, and it will continue to exist after you leave. A butterfly whose life is far shorter than yours does not know that it lives little. For it, its life is all it knows."
I followed with my gaze a blue butterfly flying above the water.
"But we know we will die," I said. "Perhaps that is the difference."
"One of the important differences."
"And sometimes that knowledge is very hard."
"Yes. But have you thought about what it gives you?"
"Fear?"
"That too. But not only."
I looked at her.
"It makes us appreciate what we have?"
"Sometimes. It also obliges you to choose."
"What do you mean?"
"When you know you cannot do everything, you are required to decide what is important to you. Every choice gives place to one thing and gives up another. Out of that limitation your priorities are formed."
I thought about that.
How many times had I told myself I would do something when I had more time? How many conversations I postponed, how many places I wanted to see, how many things I wanted to learn?
But there were also moments when precisely the knowledge that time is limited made me stop everything and be with those I loved.
"Are you saying that death gives meaning to life?" I asked.
"No."
Her answer was so clear that I raised my gaze to her.
"Death does not create the meaning of life. It only changes the way you relate to it."
She paused a moment.
"Think of a person who loves his child. Does his love stem from the fact that one day he will die?"
"Certainly not."
"And if both could live forever, would the love lose its value?"
"I do not think so."
"If so, meaning is not born of the end. It lies in what takes place between the beginning and the end, and perhaps also beyond them."
I felt something in my thoughts grow clear.
For years I had heard people say that it is precisely death that makes life precious. But I was never fully at peace with that idea. Love, beauty, knowledge, compassion — do they need death in order to have value?
"So perhaps we confuse meaning with urgency," I said.
The entity smiled.
"Explain."
"The knowledge that life is short makes us feel urgency. We want to accomplish, to achieve, to leave something behind us. But that is not necessarily what gives things meaning."
"Continue."
"Perhaps a thing can have meaning even if it lasts forever. And perhaps precisely when there is no need to hurry, one can truly know it."
The entity looked at me for a long time.
"Now you are beginning to distinguish between two things you thought were one."
"Between time and life?"
"Between the length of life and its depth."
The river continued to flow between us.
I sat in silence and tried to take in the words.
And then another question rose in me.
"If so, why does time feel different at different moments?"
"What do you mean?"
"There are hours that pass without our feeling them, and minutes that seem very long. When we are happy time seems to flee, and when we suffer it almost stops."
The entity moved her hand above the water.
"Because you do not experience time itself. You experience what takes place within you and around you, and your mind builds from it a feeling of duration."
"So time does not truly speed up or slow down?"
"The clock can go on measuring it at a fixed pace, even as your experience changes. But the clock and the experience are not the same thing."
"And why in childhood did the years feel longer?"
"Think of one year in the life of a five-year-old girl, and of a year in the life of a fifty-year-old woman."
"For the girl it is a fifth of her life. For the woman only a far smaller part."
"True. But that is only one way to think about the difference. In childhood many things are new. You learn to identify, to distinguish, to understand. The experiences leave many traces in memory. When many days resemble one another, the mind does not keep every detail to the same degree."
I remembered the childhood vacations that had seemed endless to me, and the recent years that passed with a speed I found hard to explain.
"So perhaps the years do not become shorter," I said. "We simply stop noticing them in the same way."
"Often."
"And can that be changed?"
"What do you think?"
I looked around me.
Since I woke on the island, I had noticed every flower and every bird. Even the short way from the structure to the river was full of details I remembered.
"Perhaps when we learn new things, step out of our habits, truly observe what is around us…"
"Then you give the experience a place in your consciousness."
"Meaning, one can feel that our lives are richer without adding even one day to them."
"Yes. But do not confuse the feeling of time with its length. Rich lives are not necessarily long lives, and long lives are not necessarily rich."
The sentence stayed with me.
I looked at the river.
Suddenly I understood how many times I had asked for more time for myself, when perhaps what I truly wanted was to be present more in the time I already had.
But still one question remained that gave me no rest.
"And what about the past?" I asked. "Does it truly disappear?"
The entity raised her eyes.
"What makes you ask?"
"Because there are people who are no longer in my life. There are moments I would give everything to return to, even for one minute. If time keeps advancing, did everything that was simply cease to exist?"
My voice weakened a little.
I thought of beloved faces, of voices I could still hear in my memory, and of the knowledge that I would never again meet those who had been part of my life.
The entity did not hurry to answer.
She looked at me as if she understood that this question was different from the previous ones.
"When you remember a person you loved," she said at last, "what do you feel?"
"Sometimes love. Sometimes longing. Sometimes pain."
"And are those feelings real?"
"Yes."
"Even though the moment in which they were created has already passed?"
"Yes."
"If so, the past is no longer present as that moment, but it continues to affect your present."
I looked at her.
"That does not mean it still exists."
"True. And you must be careful with the assumption that everything that leaves traces continues to exist in the same form."
I appreciated that answer.
She had not tried to console me with a promise she was not prepared to explain.
"So one cannot return to the past?"
"Are you asking whether one can return to the place where you were, or be again who you were?"
I thought a moment.
"What is the difference?"
"Suppose you could stand again in your childhood home, on a certain day you remember well. You would arrive there with everything you know today. Would you experience that day as you experienced it then?"
"No."
"Because you are no longer that child."
I felt the meaning of her words.
Even if a moment of the past could be restored, the person returning to it has already changed.
"So we cannot truly return," I said. "Even if the place and the moment remained exactly as they were."
"You can meet a familiar thing again. You cannot erase from yourself all that you have experienced since."
I looked at the water.
"And that is a little sad."
"Sometimes. But think also of what it makes possible."
"What?"
"Learning."
She pointed to the current.
"If you had always remained the same woman, what would be the meaning of everything you went through? Experience changes you. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it widens your understanding. You cannot return to being who you were before it, but you can choose what to do with what you learned."
I was silent.
I thought of mistakes I made and of things I would change if I could. Over the years I learned to forgive myself for some of them, but others still returned to me from time to time.
"So perhaps regret is the wish to return to the past with the wisdom of the present," I said.
"And learning is to use that wisdom in what can still be changed."
I raised my gaze to her.
For a moment I felt as if she had phrased a thought that had accompanied me for years without my managing to give it words.
"And what about the future?" I asked. "Does it already exist?"
The entity looked at the water.
"Do you think it exists?"
"I do not know. Sometimes I feel that everything happens according to a certain order, as if there is a path already determined for us. And at other times I am convinced that our choices change everything."
"Perhaps the question is not whether the future exists, but what it means that it is not yet known to you."
"But you are the Entity of Time. Do you know what will happen?"
"I know many possibilities."
"So the future is not fixed?"
"Not everything that can be known about the world makes it possible to know in advance every choice that will be made in it. And even if there are laws that limit the possibilities, it does not mean all possibilities are identical."
I thought about that.
"Meaning, we are not free to do everything, but we still have choice within the limitations?"
"That is one way to understand freedom."
"And what if my choice is already known to God?"
The entity was silent.
I looked at her curiously.
"Is that a question that is hard even for you?"
"It is a question that contains within it an assumption about the way God knows. Are you sure that divine knowledge, if it exists, resembles human knowledge?"
I did not answer.
"You know things through memory, observation, inference and expectation," she continued. "But if you speak of the Creator of time itself, why do you assume He must know reality only through past, present and future?"
I felt a quiet excitement.
I had never thought of it in that way.
"So perhaps the question of whether God knows the future is not precise," I said. "Because it assumes that for Him too there is a future that has not yet arrived."
"Possibly."
"And perhaps all times are revealed before Him together?"
"That is a possibility human beings can think about. But do not hurry to turn a possibility into complete understanding."
I looked at the colorful sky.
"If God created time," I said slowly, "perhaps He is not subject to it as we are subject to it."
The entity smiled.
"Now you are asking a deeper question."
I sat in silence.
Until that moment I had thought of time as something enormous that encompasses all that exists. But if time itself is part of creation, perhaps it too has boundaries.
And if it has boundaries, what lies beyond them?
Can one even use the word "beyond" in a place where there is no distance and no time?
"I want to ask you something," I said.
"Ask."
"If I live forever, will time cease to exist for me?"
The entity descended from the stone on which she sat and advanced across the water. I did not see her feet sink, but around each step delicate circles formed.
She stopped before me, a short distance from the bank.
"Before I answer you, you must distinguish between eternity and an unending duration."
"What is the difference?"
"Imagine a life in which you go on existing year after year, without aging and without death. You still experience events one after another. You remember what was and wait for what will come."
"Those are eternal lives, aren't they?"
"Those are lives with no known end. But you still live within a sequence."
"And what is the other possibility?"
"An existence in which you no longer depend on that sequence in the same way."
I tried to imagine it.
"But how can one think without one thought coming after another? How can one learn if there is no before and after?"
"You cannot easily imagine a form of consciousness that does not operate like your consciousness today. You are trying to understand it by means of the very tools you seek to go beyond."
I looked at her.
"So how will I know if I want such an existence?"
"By learning first what the thing is that you seek to preserve."
"My consciousness?"
"And perhaps also your identity, your ability to love, to understand, to remember and to choose."
I felt my heart beat.
"And if I change so much that I am no longer who I am, will that truly be a continuation of my life?"
The entity looked at me with a gaze I could not decipher.
"Remember the river."
I looked at the water.
"It changes every moment, and still remains a river."
"And you change every day, and still recognize yourself. But where is the line between change and the loss of identity?"
I did not know.
"That is one of the questions you will have to carry with you to the tree," she said.
I looked up the river.
The water came from a hidden place between the mountains, flowed over the stones and continued to the sea.
"There is something I still do not understand," I said. "If time is what allows things to change, then without time will there be no change?"
"As you know change, it requires a distinction between states. But you do not yet know whether every form of existence must experience that distinction as a sequence of moments."
"So perhaps eternity is not a very long life, but an entirely different form of existence."
"Perhaps."
"And is that what awaits me at the tree?"
"The tree will allow you to come closer to the answer. It will not think in your place."
The entity returned to the stone and sat down.
The wind carried to me the scent of flowers I did not know.
I gazed at the river a while longer.
I felt I was beginning to understand something I had not managed to phrase before.
All my life I had related to time as a force that takes things from me. It took childhood, youth, the people I loved. It changed my body, my face and the world around me.
But time was not only what it took.
Within those years I learned to love. I learned to distinguish between things that are important to me and things I thought were important. I learned to know people, to part from them, to change, to forgive, to begin again.
If nothing had changed, I would not have become who I am today either.
"Perhaps all these years I was angry at the wrong thing," I said.
The entity raised her gaze.
"What do you mean?"
"I thought time was what steals life from us. But perhaps it is also what allows us to experience it."
"And what steals it?"
I thought a moment.
"There is not always someone who steals. Sometimes life simply ends."
"True."
"But we relate to everything that ended as if it were lost. Perhaps we forget that it also existed."
The entity looked at me in silence.
I felt light tears rise in my eyes.
I thought of a loved one who is no longer here. For a long time the pain that I would not see him again was so great that at times it almost hid from me the years in which he was part of my life.
"The fact that something ended," I said, "does not erase what was in it."
"No," the entity replied. "But there is also no need to deny the pain of loss in order to recognize the value of what was."
I placed a hand on my chest.
I breathed deeply.
The river continued to flow, seemingly indifferent to our conversation, but I felt I was looking at it differently.
"So what is the most important thing I must understand about time?" I asked.
The entity rose.
"That you do not live in the past, though it continues to affect you. You do not live in the future, though you can prepare for it. You act in the present, but the present too is not a point you can stop and hold."
"So what remains to me?"
"The ability to be aware of your life while it takes place."
She pointed to the river.
"You cannot stop the current. But you can notice the water, feel its touch, choose whether to enter it, and where to swim."
I looked at her.
"And what if I am afraid of where it will carry me?"
"Fear does not cancel the ability to choose. It only asks you to understand the risk better."
"And if I choose not to enter?"
"That too is a choice. But the river will keep flowing."
I was silent.
The entity smiled gently.
"Do you understand now why human beings say that time passes?"
"Because they see everything change."
"And what do they forget?"
I thought a moment.
"That they too are part of the change."
She nodded.
"You do not stand outside the river watching time go by. You are part of the changing world. Every moment changes something around you, and sometimes within you too."
I looked at my palms.
They looked as they had looked before, but I knew that in them too changes were taking place that I could not see.
"So we do not only live within time," I said. "We are also created and changed within it."
"Yes."
I raised my eyes.
"And if one day I leave my body, perhaps I will have to discover what of all this continues to exist without it as well."
"That is exactly the question that awaits you."
The entity stretched out her hand toward the river.
From the water a single drop rose.
It hovered in the air between us, clear and shining.
Within it I saw a tiny light.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Observe."
The drop grew slightly.
Within it images appeared.
I saw a small girl running in a field, a woman holding a baby, an elderly person sitting beside a window. The images changed quickly, but each of them seemed so real that I could almost hear their voices.
And then I saw a woman standing on a seashore.
I recognized myself.
I came closer.
Within the drop another image appeared.
I saw myself standing beside the Tree of Eternity.
But something in me was different.
I could not understand what it was.
I stretched my hand toward the drop.
"Is that my future?"
"It is a possibility."
"And what will happen if I choose otherwise?"
The light within the drop changed.
For a moment several figures of me appeared, each in a different place.
And then they all disappeared.
The drop became water again and fell into the river.
"Why did you show me this?" I asked.
"So that you understand that the future you imagine is not the only thing that can take place."
"But I want to know whether I will choose correctly."
"Correct according to what?"
The question stopped me.
"According to what will be good for me."
"And what if the thing that will be good for you today is not the thing you will think is good after you learn more?"
I did not answer.
"A choice is not always a way to reach a result you already know," she continued. "Sometimes it is the way in which you discover who you can be."
I looked at the place where the drop had disappeared.
"So there is no way to know in advance?"
"One can learn, weigh, listen and choose carefully. But there is no way to live all the possibilities before choosing one of them."
I felt the meaning of the words.
Perhaps that was one of the great difficulties in human life. We are required to make decisions out of partial knowledge, and then live with their results.
"And you?" I asked. "You are, after all, the Entity of Time. Do you regret anything?"
She smiled a slightly sad smile.
"I know the changes. I do not live the choices as you live them."
"So you do not envy us?"
"Why would I envy?"
"Because we can feel. Love, fear, hope. Even if it hurts sometimes."
The entity looked at me for a long time.
"You assume I lack something because I do not experience it in your way. Perhaps that too is one of the limitations of human thought."
I felt a slight embarrassment.
"You are right."
"There is no need for you to agree with me," she said. "It is enough that you notice your assumption."
I nodded.
This conversation was different from any conversation I had held in my life. I did not feel that someone was trying to convince me of one truth. On the contrary. Every time I thought I had reached an answer, I discovered that within it hid another question.
And still, I did not feel lost.
I felt I was beginning to see.
The entity descended from the stone and stood again upon the water.
"You must continue on your way," she said.
I looked up the river.
"Does it lead to the tree?"
"It will lead you close to it."
"Will we meet again?"
"As long as you experience change, you will have a connection to time. But perhaps you will know it differently."
I looked at her for the last time.
"I think I understand now something I did not understand before."
"What is it?"
"That all my life I wanted to have more time. But I never asked myself whether I truly know how to live the time I already have."
The entity smiled.
"That is a question worth taking with you."
I began to walk along the river.
A few steps later I stopped and turned around.
The figure still stood in the water.
"I have one more question," I called.
"I am listening."
"If I manage to reach eternal life, will I be able to return and experience moments that have already passed?"
The entity looked at me.
"Why do you want to return to them?"
"Because there are moments I would like to live again."
"And if you could create new moments, no less deep and beautiful?"
I thought about that.
"They will not be the same moments."
"True."
"And people I lost will not be in them."
The entity did not answer at once.
"There are things time cannot restore," she said at last. "But you do not yet know what it means that an existence ends, or whether every form of existence indeed ends as you think."
I felt my heart contract.
"Are you saying I might be able to meet them again?"
"I am saying you do not yet know enough to determine what is possible and what is not."
I stood in silence.
She had promised nothing.
And still, for the first time in years, I felt that the question of what happens after death is not only a question about loss.
Perhaps it is also a question about the nature of existence itself.
I continued walking.
The river flowed beside me, and the sun lit the water in shades of gold and silver.
Above me butterflies passed, and the colorful clouds moved slowly across the sky.
I did not know how much time had passed since I woke.
But this time I did not try to calculate.
I listened to my steps, to the murmur of the water and to the wind passing through the leaves.
I thought of all the moments in which I was so busy with what was about to happen that I did not notice what was happening now.
And of all the times I returned in my thoughts to the past, as if I could change it if I thought about it enough.
Perhaps I cannot control time.
But I can learn to stop fighting it.
Further along the path, beyond the river's bend, I noticed again the immense branches of the Tree of Eternity.
They looked closer.
I remembered the words of the Entity of Time: there is a difference between the length of life and its depth.
Until now I had wanted to know whether one can live forever.
Now another question rose in me.
If one day all the time in the world stood at my disposal, what would make me rise each morning and want to live another day?
I continued walking toward the tree, knowing that the answer to this question might be more important than eternity itself.
End of Chapter Three
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