203 – Endless v2

FYI: My last blog break involved searching for good food and wine in Tuscany. Being that my 3-week search failed, I must return in the future to resume the expedition.

The earlier Endless essay sparked some new ideas: some from readers and some from me. Together means volume 2. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and stimulating mine.

Click the video above for several minutes of background waves while reading.

I like to walk on the beach. It is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

Looking across the water, I don’t see any land, but I know many lands lie beyond the horizon. To the exotic, historical, arid, tropical, icy, and more – to islands, cities, towns, cliffs, plains, forests, deserts, famous landmarks, and other wonderful beaches. This is an endless sea that can take me to endless places.

The horizon is endless because we cannot reach it. Although we think we’re moving closer to the horizon, it is unattainable as the lover one will never have.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

Small things are endless – the number of red blood cells in each drop is in the millions. Because there are many drops in our 5-6 quarts/liters of blood, the total number of red blood cells seems endless.

We can set up a series of mirrors to appear endless. I know photographers like this, plus the illusion interests me. 

Life has things that seem endless that actually aren’t – bottomless coffee, refillable drinks, and an unlimited buffet. Although they aren’t endless, one can get more than their share.

I look to the sky containing clouds. The sky seems endless, but knowledge reminds me that the sky is a thin layer surrounding our planet. I know that our sky is finite, but I also know night allows me to look beyond the thin blue veil into the black darkness of space. The endless sky is full of wonders and mysteries that are limited only by our imagination.

I think about looking into deep space – a place of endless stars, galaxies, planets, and moons. A place of seemingly endless void of darkness and emptiness. A location of endless black holes, white holes, and wormholes. I don’t think we can escape a black hole, and enter a white hole. But if a black hole is one end of the wormhole, is the white hole the other end? My head hurts.

The sky is also the setting of rainbows – the seemingly endless flame of the spectral colors of ROY G BIV. Rainbows cause us to stop, pause, dream, ponder the special moment, and wonder about the location of the pot of gold somewhere within the rainbow’s infinity.  

I stop to stare at a large patch of shells. Their patterns seem endless. My mind jumps to the patterns found in nature – the regular, irregular, and abstract – patterns of lines, spirals, curves, and angles. From the simple to the abstract, from the obvious to the microscopic, and from the subtle to the bold. There is no doubt in my mind that patterns in nature are endless. 

Realizing the connection between patterns and mathematics, I shift to concepts such as the Golden Ratio, the Fibonacci sequence, and fractals – those never-ending patterns of mathematical shapes created by a repeating process acting as an endless loop.

Thinking of mathematics leads to repeating patterns of division problems, such as ten divided by three leading to an endless string of threes. Then there’s the letter pi with its endless mathematical value.

Mathematics leads me to infinity – a term for no limits or boundaries in time, space, and magnitude. Infinity is a difficult concept to grasp by us with a finite life. Perhaps that is why mathematicians use infinity to deal with endless – a value larger than any real number. Interestingly, an unreal number can be larger than any real number. I wonder: Is mathematics the science of the infinite?

Yes, infinity is endless. Infinity is a place with no beginning and no end. A place that has always been there and will always be there. Trying to grasp the idea of infinity and an endless universe is difficult for me. At least the words in my sentence are finite while I stand in awe and wonder at endless.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com

Time seems endless. Sixty seconds pass to form a minute, then 60 more seconds for another minute, and the beat is continuous. Then add in 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days a year, 10 years in a decade, 10 decades in a century, and 1000 years in a millennium. I’ll stop there because time is endless and my time on this planet is finite. However, my time is a mere fraction of a tick in the grand scheme of time. Perhaps time is endless, therefore timeless. Is the thought of time as timeless contradictory? 

Endless reminds me of the circle of life: birth, life, death, and rebirth – plus all the emotions and beauty that accompany the circle of life.

Endless is an infinite journey of sights, sounds, people, places, things, dreams, wishes, and many interesting questions to ponder. Perhaps endless is also spiritual.

Endless is the many things going beyond our ability to comprehend. It’s difficult to imagine energy as endless because the first law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can change from one form to another. 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Concepts such as infinity and eternity are also difficult to grasp. In our minds, eternity is infinite – but our lives are finite while living in an infinite universe. Endless, eternity, and infinity seem to ebb and flow between our conscious and the great subconscious, which is within us and beyond our control. Maybe – just maybe – and in some strange way, endless is good for us.

Although endless is endless, this essay about endless is ending. Time will tell if this essay leads to a third one, but there is endless beauty in the world around us. After all, I like to walk on the beach. It is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

See what other bloggers have posted about Endless

• Timeless (a poem)
• Endless Perspective (a photo and a short personal essay)
• Endless Dark Night (a poem)
• Endless Journey (an essay)
• The List is Endless (a poem)

Next Post: Debris – Saturday 11th November @ 1 AM (Eastern US)