What is Your Comprehension of Forever?

Forever lasts until my wife says its over. An Eternity is how long mother-in-laws visit.

What an interesting question! I think for me "forever" or "eternity" is until the end of time..Not to the end of this life though because there will be lives after this one (I'm a believer in reincarnation) but until the end of all existence, the end of everything if htat makes sense...

to me it means endless.. like time itself, even long after we are gone time will still go on.. But if i'm talking about soething i will DO forever for example, i will Love you FOREVER, then i guess that would just mean untill i die, cause i can't love anymore if i'm not here. ;)

It means nothing to me. It's an empty word, a breath, a meaningless garble. Why? Because it's impossible to grasp from my mortal standpoint. As a child I listened to stories at the feet of my great-grandparents about times that came before, and I could understand the concepts of those times because they provided the framework for me, from either their experience or that of our ancestors. When talking about the immediate future, I can see a framework based on how old my child will be, or how long I will have lived where I live, or how long I will have been married... as long as I have a framework to work with I am fine. But what is the framework for forever? I believe that I have lived in this world before, and the fuzzy memories of those times past might help me understand a bit of what is beyond a mortal lifespan. But 100 years into the future, 1000 years into the future, forever? What can I see and understand there? I've been alive 27 years, and that's 27 years longer than was expected of my life. How can I imagine 1 million years, or 1 billion years, let alone forever? I'd rather keep my terms to things I can grasp, or use terms that admit I can't grasp the idea. I'd rather say "longer than I can know" or "until everything we know is gone".

I think forever or eternity have two different meanings in my mind and it's not down to religious beliefs. I'm not exactly religious but feel I am somewhat spiritual. I do believe we have souls that exist after our deaths. Forever to me means the rest of my natural current life. Eternity means the lifetime of my soul, whether my soul lives on after my passing from this world or not is a different matter. At the end of the day, when you meet someone that you feel is your soul-mate you might say you want your souls to be united forever but I feel sometimes that someone you initially felt was your soul-mate might just turn out to be your partner for life but the more you get used to them and the more you get to know them (good and bad habits) over the years, the more you realise that soul mates might not really exist. That's just my way of thinking :) No offence meant to any religious or spiritual people :)

I would like to answer in my simple comprehension as "lifetime", here in my earthly life and if I get lucky and be given another life after, then it would still be continued.I wish we have a clue Adoniah of the heavenly life so that I may have to give you a definite eternal answer.Such term so deep, unmeasurable and yet the human mind couldn't grasp the extent of its existence!!!

To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. William Blake's definition makes a lot of sense to me. It is the complete absence of the sense of time that one can sometimes achieve. 'Forever' can also be used to describe the time it takes to do things at the normal pace when you are in a tearing hurry! 'Ever' on its own is an odd word. It can mean 'always' but it is also the opposite of 'never' (as in 'If you are ever in London, do look me up!') 'Eternity' is definitely time related (just as 'infinity' is distance or number related) but 'ever' and 'forever' imply the continuity of an action or property ('ever-changing', 'evergreen', 'forever young'). Otherwise, I think I am with Lecanis. They are names that we give to something which is really incomprehensible.

Forever is shorter than eternity. Forever is the longest time we humans can have. And eternity is the longest amount of time period.We all get our part of forever.But our essence is eternal.This is the best secular way I can explain it.

Forever would be from the beginning of creation as I know it and experience it, a continuum of lives from the moment of conscious recollection of Being. Such a huge question.

Forever is the scariest thing I can think of. Even if it means heaven, doing anything "forever" frightens the beejeezus out of me! Because when does it end?????

"Forever" and "Eternity" when not used in a religious way are both completely subjective words. If you say "I'll love you forever" you're speaking of your own personal "forever", meaning your lifetime. Same goes for eternity. Someone may or may not also be referring to the "after-life" when they use these words, or maybe they're not even thinking of that. Annie

Ever since I heard the mathematical pun "Without geometry life is pointless" I have for some reason defined "forever" as a point, a mathematical point. To be specific, I mean that space of which Euclid said it has no "part." I mean that concept which is not a thing at all, but just a container for something incredibly meaningful to us that is eternal in depth but has no width and is probably unknown to most people on the planet earth. What is the point? It is hard to explain, but the second I perceived, dimly, for the first time what a point meant, mathematically, it became a symbol for me of life itself, and of the fluid nature of eternity. On the surface we see just a dot, but it stretches out forever. I feel that life is like that somehow.

'Forever' to me is the unknowable amount of time I have left. After that, I don't even speculate. We'll see what goes on when the time comes!

forever and eternity is listening to my thearapist, waiting for his ramblings to finish. or watching the soap operas through the curtains of my next door neighbour. now, thats cold!

to me forever means until someting is used up or comes to an end.

Hello Adoniah, Wow, what a deep question. I don't believe that an abstract such as eternity, can be comprehended. Instead I believe that it is sensed, or felt. For me, eternity or forever encompasses the beginning, the end, and everything in between. It is an endless series of the present. To better explain, I'll share what my mental pattern of thought was as I read your question: I immediately envisioned a mountain. The mountain has been there from the beginning, and will be there 'till the end, though it will change, ever so slightly, every moment of every day, for as long as there a new dawns. It does not matter that we never bother to define the beginning or end of what, because we can only consider the mountain in relation to our self in the present. A better explanation might be found in a childhood experience of mine. On my first visit to the World Trade Center, in NYC, I stood at the base of one of the towers, and looked up. My entire visual field was filled with the building. I was overwhelmed by its enormity. If I glanced to the left or right, without moving my head, or stepping back from the building, nothing but the building could be seen. If I glancef straight up, I could see that at some point the sky above was separate from the building. Yet, from that vantage point, it was impossible to know where the building ended, and the sky began. It affected the entirety of my being, including most of my senses, and my balance as well. For that moment it was the 'all', or never ending, or forever. Make sense?

Forever I take to mean for all time. Eternity I take to mean without end, and that therefore the two are different. But sometimes I think to be eternal is to be completely in the present all the best urban

Mmmm...interesting discussion. Now how to answer..LOL There really can't be any real great concept of what forever or eternity means...not really as we really don't know what forever is...I'm thinking more in terms as astronomy for instance. Even astronomers haven't discovered the true beginning or true end of our universe,...therefore from that standpoint our universe stretches out "forever"...I mean as a for instance...the nearest galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy which is 2 million light years away....the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second...now likes yikes I just can't visualize the true scope of what that actually means even though I'm an astronomy buff...When we look at that Galaxy we are viewing it as it was 2 million years ago...we are looking back in time when we look out into space..One would like to think that galaxy still exists..ah, but does it? If one of it's star systems exploded into a supernova we won't know it until another 2 million years from now..weird concept, no? So even with the concept of "eternity"---we'd like to think that galaxies will remain for eternity..but do they?

Hi Adoniah, I'm not sure that any of us can comprehend eternity. It's something that is without a beginning or an end, and we don't think that way. Blessings.

sometimes forever can mean a few hours, lol...like when you are waiting for your car to get fixed, or standing in line somewhere for something. but i really think forever is infinite...a good example is our atmosphere...it goes on and on and on and as far as we can tell it does not end.