Eternity...

Is it too much to ask for? I wonder many times. It hinges on a succession of "ifs" that can have no answer, but it is the summation of whatever I could call my aspirations. To experience every moment and every aspect of existence on this planet from the inception to the firey end. To be honest, I would be happy to have the experience of the universe, but I can only hope that some limitation might increase the possibilities in my favor. Doubtful, but it is undoubtedly the one question I would ask of the God I still believe in: what has all this been? For everyone and everything. I would want to be the animals and the grass and the stones. The water and the sky and the stars. I would want to be the first cells that split and the first creatures that chose land. Where humans came from, of course, but also the even yet undiscovered worlds of the sea and of space. I want to see the world from every creature's eyes. It certainly is not that I want the omniscience of God. I ask only for the small corner of this one planet. Granted, we have many stories about the troubles that deities have taken over our little rock, but it is still a minute part of a theoretically infinite universe. So is it really so much to ask to know absolutely everything about our small existence? To have the sentience granted me bathed in every moment and every particle. To know if the magic I feel in the unutterable beauty around me is felt by all. To know if it is even greater than I could imagine. I suppose I can guess at the substance behind all that I feel; but I ache to know. To feel it through something beyond myself. To have hope that when my body withers away so quickly and so soon that there is something I long for after my infinitesimal part. I want to see the birth of the planet in its violent chaos or its sudden completion. I want to feel the drama of odds choosing this or that species and this or that combination of elements. It is a story that no one has the pages to and it is the one story I crave. Not alone I am sure. But maybe if I am specific with the deity of power, I might have some chance once my single heart stops beating to find resurrection in the small history of our planet. If there is an after. If there is a God. And if He listens to the inconsequential yearnings of His creation. This is my request.