Forever
I don’t know if it’s changed but in my youth, the use of terms like “eternity” and “forever” were associated with religion, for example, promises of heaven and threats of hell … forever.
Then there was the old Mass in mysterious Latin and “per omnia saecula saeculorum,” one translation being “unto the age of ages” but more often a simpler “forever and ever” sung with great pomp in oratorios like Handel’s “Messiah.” Forever and ever, amen.
In Filipino translations of the Bible, the term “magpakailanman” is used, but in daily use, the word is associated more with love songs, and when you’re in love, magpakailanman did mean forever and ever.
How times have changed, “forever” losing its mystique and taking on more brutal and painful connotations. We want everything instant, now na, and so we fret about how it’s taking forever to get something done.
More ominously, forever has taken an apocalyptic tone. Amid the climate emergency, we are warned about plastics lasting forever, images flashing in our mind of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, marine debris, mostly plastic, drifting out in the Pacific. Some of the garbage goes back more than 50 years and the patch, back in 2018, was already 1.6 million square kilometers or five times the total land area of the Philippines. We are among six nations that are main contributors to the Patch.
The debris is not inert, much of it breaking down into microplastics, some of which will float back to land, and into our bodies or by eating fish that have ingested the microplastics. Larger fragments, especially plastic bags and sheets, are swallowed by marine animals, particularly cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals) potentially fatal as the plastics clog up their digestive tracts.
In recent years, there has been concern about forever chemicals or PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), widely used for their anti-grease and anti-oil properties. They’re best known for giving cookware anti-stick properties but you find them, too, in carpets, textiles and oh aren’t they ever so handy as containers for microwaveable popcorn?
The forever chemicals are so called because they stay in the environment … forever, seeping into soil, the air, and drinking water, increasing risks for testicular and kidney cancers, cholesterol, and disrupting the body’s endocrine (hormonal) systems.
We also live in times of “forever wars” like Putin’s forever war in Ukraine but there are other forever wars great and small, many spill-overs of American military interventions in various conflicts around the world, especially following the 9/11 bombings in 2001. We forget the aftermath is a never-ending war that continues to be waged on various fronts, from the security gauntlets in buildings to the ubiquitous surveillance cameras to the internet’s trolls and hackers.
War on terror, war on drugs need to be waged forever to keep people in power, forever.
The forevers persist because there’s still too much denial of the problems. Many still insist there is no climate emergency, never mind the heat waves. There’s denial, too, of political Pied Pipers taking us down the path to oblivion with promises of peace and order and salvation. We complain about fake news but the problem isn’t just paid trolls but our own relatives and friends: I despair thinking of the 80 million Americans who tried to get Donald Trump a second term … and who will try again next year and just might succeed as the world girds itself for Trump another four years, or forever.
But it isn’t just the United States. Whether the barangay elections this year or the big one in 2028, think forever before we vote, lest we find ourselves needing to trek in despair to the Mother of Perpetual Help and assorted saints for succor.
Might there be more positive forevers to comfort us?
Our spouses and partners to whom we vowed everlasting love? (I’m suddenly remembering another forever, the everlasting flowers of Baguio.) Hoping for forever with spouses might be dangerous, especially in the world’s last nation without divorce. Buddhists distinguish suffering that comes from missing someone you love, as well as being stranded with someone you have come to loathe. Forevermore in both cases.
I think a more reliable forever to strive for is that of friends and friendship, built from times together, kababata, the ones with whom we grew up together, and the many other “ka” from the same school, same office. Some of our best friends might even be the ones we married, sharing so much that we became best friends more than spouses. Then, too, maybe they were the ones we (desperately) thought would be the love of our life, until reason prevailed and made us realize it was better to part ways but remain friends—no frills, no conditions, just unlimited, unadulterated love, affection, and trust.
Best friends, forever.
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