“Nothing lasts forever and we both know hearts can change … lovers always come and lovers always go and no one’s really sure who’s letting go today”: quotes from a song named: November Rain by Guns N Roses.  A song I have been introduced to some years back.  This song has such powerful words and powerful messages to go along with them. Someone told me once that they thought of me while listening to this song. So I paid attention to the words more and I started to understand what this person was trying to tell me.

This brings me to my thoughts of the word “forever” .. What is forever? Can anything last forever? Why do we all want forever?

The definition of forever is: for everlasting time, eternally, for always, a very long time, without ever ending, continually, everlasting .. etc. This is what I found when searching for the meaning of forever. It is an adverb, which is used to describe a verb, an adjective, another adverb or a whole sentence, according to Macmillan dictionary.

Having the word technically explained, doesn’t mean it is still understood.  When is this word used? It seems to appear whenever there are strong emotions involved.  People like continuity, they like stability and so having the same thing or someone, or being in the same state or feeling the same way; ‘forever’ means just that. That it will never end, it will remain the same for an undefined time and since we cannot stop time and time seems endless as far as we can understand, it only makes sense to us to co-relate the way we want our tomorrows to be the same as today and so on.

People, including me, don’t really understand the concept of time.  We may be living it and witnessing it but we just don’t get it. So if I don’t get it, why am I claiming to know what forever is and what is even stranger why am I promising forever to someone when I don’t know what forever even means to me.

Forever is yet another unknown, and possibly will be till the end of time – which again we don’t know, when that will be or even if it will be.  It is wise to admit that I don’t know than to pretend that I do and make mistakes because of it.

I am not sure really where I am going with this thought – I just feel that I need to make a point perhaps for myself to wake up from a dream.  May be at this time in my life I see things from a different perspective.  I am probably trying to make sense of my life, where it has been, where it currently is and where it is headed.  It has always been that way for me, I live in the present but yet so consumed with thoughts of my past and trying to make sense of it all and at the same time I am confused and a bit fearful I will admit, towards what will become of me tomorrow.  Why this matters to me I do not know. Why is it a pattern ever since I can remember, I also do not know.

Who am I? I question my pure existence! How any of this ties in to ‘forever’? What is forever for me? Does it exist? Is it possible? Is it a dream? Am I even real? What the hell is wrong with me? Why don’t I just live and stop analyzing and questioning everything around me?

There is indeed an answer to my perplexity. I just don’t know how to find it – yet! I never give up – that much I know. I also know that I am a gift of God. I am here for a reason – which will be manifested in due time. And here we mention ‘time’ again. Everything we say or do is linked to time and so ‘forever’ is a time that we as people don’t understand – yet!

But let’s go back to my original thought influenced by the quote from Guns N Roses.  I have heard this term over and over in my lifetime and it is quite the contradicting statement I must say.  There is a negative vibe to the first section: “nothing lasts” then it changes to a more positive vibe and is very hopeful: “forever”.  It feels good when you say and hear the word ‘forever’. It really does have an impact on you – no matter when or how you say it.  However when you combine ‘nothing’ with ‘forever’, it kinda leaves you with a perplexed thought. It’s almost like you wanna say: ‘what? why?who? when? how? no way’. We deny it and say it doesn’t make sense and that it cannot be true because just the thought that it might be – scares us to death.  It would shatter our hopes and dreams of tomorrow, it would shatter our feelings and sense of security – which depended so much on ‘forever’ even though it is based on pure blind faith.  This is because forever is not materialized in our lives – but yet its presence is so strong that we cannot accept the thought of its non-existence.

That is the difference between fantasy and reality.  In a way ‘forever’ is a wishful thinking – a dream – a fantasy; one might think.  But let us have a good look at our reality.  The facts prove otherwise – it proves that ‘forever’ is not really possible.  The reason that may be the case is due to the fact that change would not be possible if forever existed and since we know change is part of our current lives and has been since the beginning of time, then that leaves us with the end of the equation: forever = fantasy.  If we go way back  – even to the creation of this world, there is clear evidence that truly ‘nothing stayed the same’.

Indeed there were changes as time went by till this moment I am writing this and changes will continue to happen even as I write.  Every minute that passes by, does not come back, and the world in the next minute is not the same as it was in the previous minute. Change happens as life continues as time passes as the dream of forever fades away. The evidence is right here before our eyes .. How can we deny it? So it is true ‘nothing lasts forever’.

Having said that, this brings out even more questions and more serious topics to be resolved based on this analysis. My core foundation can be shaken just by this clarification. And that scares the hell out of me. More questions!! More doubts!! More uncertainty!! As if I didn’t have enough of that already! Just imagine the thoughts this will bring .. Nothing means – all that we say, all that we do, all that we are … none of that lasts .. NONE.

Craig Ferguson:

“The Universe is very, very big.
It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules.
Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever.
Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies.

Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.”