Sub specie aeternitatis

"From the perspective of eternity"--a phrase Spinoza used in his Ethics. 


It can mean a lot of things:  Objectivity: Backing up from the emotion of the immediate and considering an event reasonably with detachment.  Humor: Standing on the mountaintop and laughing at our small, silly concerns.  Humility: Realizing that our time and place are a pittance in cosmic time and space.  Irony: Recognizing that what we say and do is so relative, so temporal, so tiny, so insignificant.

But it can also mean: Substance: being a part of Nature and Reality. Meaning:  searching for the explanation of all that is.  Importance: experiencing a relationship to everyone and everything.  Ultimacy: recognizing that everything we do is a moment in the unfolding of the Universe.

What a privilege and gift that we who are living have the ability to experience the NOW.  It is in this PRESENCE that we are in-touch with all that is past and all that is to come, all that is within and all that is outside, all that is personal and all that is communal, all that is real and all that is ideal.  We are the BEGINNING of eternity, infinity, universality in our awareness of ourselves connected to all.  Though at an infinitesimal point of time and space, our QUESTION embraces the universe.


Living the good life and treating all others well is finally life and action sub specie aeternitatis.