PEARL

Music is so fulfilling. No matter who you are, music can fulfill. Find your own genre and there's something there that has the ability to fill you up and satisfy... it's such a universal concept and has grown with us. We crave it, we depend on it. Imagine a world without music. It seems so empty, so desolate, so hopeless.

Have you ever heard music so good that it hurt? So beautiful and perfect it makes you cry? Think of that song that is so rich and complete to you; one that stops you in your tracks and all you can do is close your eyes and take it all in. Listen to it right now.

It's like time stopped, right? Like nothing else in the world really mattered as much as what that song provided. But there's the thing, everything in that last sentence was past tense. It ended. The song ended and yeah we can hit repeat, but it doesn't change the fact that there was a beginning and an ending and nothing became new. But in that moment, there was a taste of forever and it hurt. It was so beautiful but it was sad because there was an emptiness.

The concept of eternity has been hitting me recently. More like smacking me in the face. It scares me, wakes me up in the middle of the night in a panic, and not because I'm scared of dying, but I'm scared of forever. I can't fathom the reality that after my body's clock stops ticking, I will immediately enter into this place that literally has no end. People think that believing in God is just an excuse to have peace about dying.. I think that is completely opposite. To me it is so much scarier to grasp ahold of this place where time doesn't even exist, a place that has no end; it seems easier to accept that once we die, that's it light's out for years to come.

But each part of us craves this eternity. It holds such beauty at the core that it hurts to understand it, but it fulfills... truly fulfills. Here in this life we can never really be happy; there are always goals and once we reach those, we create new ones, new desires, and new surroundings. Of course we can enjoy what this life has for us and experience it to it's extent, but it is inarguable that we won't ever satisfied. This isn't cynical, it's eye opening and makes the other end shine even brighter; I truly believe that nothing here on earth completely satisfies us because we have that yearning inside of us for the feeling that forever holds. Each one of us has that hole that God fills in eternity.