A Storyteller's Eternity

Sometimes people ask me what I'll be doing in Paradise.

I'm one of many who believe that humanity will one day reach perfection and live forever on a transformed Earth. As a Christian and one of Jehovah's Witnesses, that hope is part of my understanding of the future.

When the topic comes up, one objection often arises:

"Won't eternity get boring?"

It's never struck me as an odd question. After all, we're used to thinking of life in terms of decades. One hundred years already seems like a long time. A thousand years is almost inconceivable.

But I always give more or less the same answer:

"Not for me."

Because if there's one thing I've discovered about myself, it's that I am, above many other things, a storyteller.

And I suspect that storytellers are especially well-protected against boredom.

When I wake up in Paradise someday, I'll probably still be doing what I'm doing now: observing, learning, and telling stories. Of course, that is, after my God given duties.

The difference is that I would have much more material to work with.

However, I think people often misunderstand that scenario.

They imagine that after ten thousand years I would still be exactly the same person writing stories similar to those I write today.

But that wouldn't be true.

After ten thousand years, I wouldn't simply be a more experienced storyteller.

I would be a different storyteller.

I would have learned things we barely suspect today. I would have met people impossible to meet in our time. I would have contemplated problems, solutions, cultures, and ways of thinking that don't yet exist.

The stories wouldn't change simply because the world had changed.

They would change because I had changed.

A storyteller from ten thousand years ago wouldn't simply have more knowledge. I would have different questions.

Perhaps I would discover that certain themes I consider important today are just the beginning of much deeper ones.

Maybe I would learn that love can be expressed in ways we don't yet understand. That friendship can reach levels of loyalty that seem legendary to us today. That beauty has dimensions we haven't yet explored.

And then I would write from that experience.

I wouldn't be producing the four thousandth version of the same story.

I would be contemplating reality from a completely different perspective.

In fact, I suspect that the real problem for an eternal storyteller wouldn't be a lack of stories.

It would be deciding which ones to tell first.

I imagine an ordinary afternoon under the shade of a tree.

While others chat or work, I would be thinking:

"Should I write about the gardener who dedicated three centuries to developing a new variety of rose?"

Then I would remember another idea.

"No, wait. I haven't finished that biography of the physicist who spent two hundred years studying the mathematical structure of snowflakes."

And before I could decide, a third possibility would arise.

"Although there's also that story about the coastal community that learned to coexist with marine creatures no one knew existed when I was young..." Because that's how a storyteller's mind works. A farmer studies the land because he needs a harvest.

A physicist studies wormholes because he's interested in physics.

A linguist studies language because he needs to understand how we communicate.

But a storyteller has a peculiar habit:

He's interested in things that don't directly concern him.

He studies the land because there might be a story in it.

He studies wormholes because someone could get lost inside one.

He studies languages because perhaps one day he'll need an elderly widow to convince an entire city using a forgotten tongue.

We storytellers live surrounded by possibilities.

That's why the idea that eternal life would end up being boring has never convinced me.

Boredom usually appears when we feel there's nothing left to learn, nothing meaningful to do, or nothing beautiful to discover.

But the Christian hope I find in the Bible describes precisely the opposite.

A future where learning continues.

Where discovery continues.

Where creation continues.

And where people continue to grow. Some temperaments seem made for boundless curiosity.

I suspect mine is one of them.

That's why, when someone asks me what I'll do in Paradise, my answer remains simple:

I'll keep telling stories.

Only, as the centuries pass, I hope to become an ever-better storyteller.

Because I've come to believe that creation isn't an enigma that's solved once and for all.

It's a conversation that never runs out of things to say.