The End of Time - "I don't want to go"
by Liv | Published on January 4th, 2010, 5:06 pm | Arts
(Minor Spoiler Warning)
So last night in my five year old daughters room, cheerfully adorned with Barney purple walls, lovely flowers, and happy pink toys, I sat there on her bedside consoling her in my arms as she mourned the death of someone she loved. Some of you (and I can't believe I beat Sanj. to it,) may understand why she was crying. This post however is not about how David Tennant's character sacrifices himself while we look on and he says goodbye to all his friends while he knows he's dying. His last words.... "I don't want to Go." Needless to say we were all crying at the end of it. Davies (the writer), as always, is good at ripping your heart out. But as I said, this post isn't about 'Doctor Who', it's about The End of Time. Pay attention, the theme is everywhere. From the name of this final show, to a History Channel special I watched on the Mayan 2012 prophecy. I flip the channel and a commercial (though I do not recall which) says something with the exact phrase 'The end of Time", then the nun on the Christian channel is talking about it. It's everywhere!!! Like Isabel in Fools Rush In, "the signs are everywhere."
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
-Richard Bach
It definitely has gone beyond the 2012 thing. It's as if society has some internal meme- some sort of knock, knock, knock, knock that has been awakened in society and doomsday is upon on us. As rational as I am, I'll admit its creeping me out a bit, and not because my Christian friends see it as their apocalypse and their salvation. (Which consequently leaves me burning in Hell.) What happens if we do discover in the next year that everything is counting down to single event, a end of time phenomenon?
Like tomorrow was a gift, and ya got eternity to think about what to do with it, what could you do with it, what did I do with it, what would I do with it? -Tim McGraw
I won't go into arguing why or why not anything is likely or unlikely, but it does bother me when I'm told we've only discovered 1% of the Mayan civilization, one which has had a bit disappearing act each time one of these "new ages" occur. Maybe it won't happen like that, maybe the poles reverse themselves, or a giant solar wave hits us? I'm not saying I'm going to worry about any of that, or change the way I live necessarily, but maybe I should? I mean the question is, for any of us... If you suddenly found out you were going to die, would you be ready to go? Or would you regret everything you haven't done? And if that's the question, and knowing that, why aren't we out there living the way we should if we knew we were going to die? More importantly isn't that exactly, how if our civilization ends, we will feel as well? If the end of time comes won't we regret the fact we didn't attempt to imagine the impossible, that we wasted to much of our lives as skeptics? Who are we to say we are right without some level self congratulatory pompousness? Do we simply say because the end is beyond our control then it matters not? Do we blindly give our faith over to our beliefs in a God or lack there of? Do we wait for science to be rewritten by a discovery that turns everything on it's head? Or does all of that come to late?
Carl Anheuser: Are you telling me the North Pole is now somewhere in Wisconsin?
Professor West: Actually that's the South Pole now.
So as my daughter sat there and cried screaming "I don't want the Doctor to die", and me and Shan telling her that "it's just fiction, & just a show"... we began crying again. The line between reality and fiction, at least in that moment didn't seem to exist. Humans try to be rational even when they're emotionally moved by something that isn't. Sometimes I wonder if we might miss an important warning sign of things to come because of our intellectual pride.... The next time you're sitting around listening to the radio, watching TV, or reading the newspaper take a listen and see if you hear the end of time coming... and if you do, let me know, because I don't want to go.
