to finish searching

I revel in the torment of my inability to comprehend the whole.

I’d like to romanticise it as such: If I had photographic memory and immortality, I’d pour over every book, go back to college over and over to master all subjects, spend my eternal life digging at every detail, talking to every person, collecting every story and fact. Travel through space in every direction, waiting thousands of years in nothingness just so I could peek at a galaxy I never knew–or even needed to know–was there. Then I’d visit every planet. I’d meet aliens, study them. Write everything down. Head off in another direction. I’d keep searching, keep learning, keep knowing until I would have collected it all, neatly, color-coded, spine by spine, on my bookshelf.

What sort of yearning is this? Human, certainly. I’d love to know every part of myself–every part of the universe. And maybe my–everyone’s–greatest sadness, and greatest motivation, is its unattainability. If I could do such a thing, would I truly do it? If I had all the time in the world, all the brains in the world, would I look for the world?

Most likely not. There wouldn’t be much of a point to make there, for a person who remembers and lives infinitely. My limitations–my memory, my life, my body–are the only things that keep me wanting more. I wouldn’t like to have photographic memory or immortality. That would defeat the defeat of life–the defeat of never knowing everything, but having the gaul to run for it anyway.

I think at its core, it’s humanity’s bravest act. To keep searching fully knowing there’s never an end. Or maybe not brave. Maybe–no, no, not maybe, most definitely–it is the very fact that there’s no goal post that we keep on running. So all I can do is pray that we never find the end.

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