I have been thinking about the end for quite a while. Not the end of a specific thing, but the concept of the end in general.

As my understanding, in the fundamental level physical reality only changes form. Matter or energy isn’t destroyed but only transforms into something else. However, to talk about their beginning, I lack the proper understanding. Physicists talk about there is nothing before the beginning, which according to the definition of 'beginning' makes sense. But as an intuitive person, I don’t get it. I am a fan of popular flashy science. (For the undergrad major I'm currently studying, I've not been in touch with the boring parts of science for a long time- like weird integration techniques or unreasonably huge mathematical calculations. Even though I do have to do mathematical calculations once in a while, most of them are too empirical. They're too far away from pure theoretical stuff) And in internet pop science, the end of everything is a very interesting topic. Heat death, big crunch, false vacuum decay or weird hypothesis that suggests after everything in the universe decays to that point that nothing can be used to measure time, that moment is indistinguishable from the moment when bigbang happened. Also there's a concept of the 'block universe', where the past, present and the future exist simultaneously. Where present is just a 3D slice of a 4D universe. The netflix series 'Dark' kind of plays with a similar concept. If reality is really made of a 4-dimensional block universe, does anything that ever existed ever end? Do they ever cease to exist? (Pardon the use of sciency words; I've been reading a sci-fi book lately.) Everything I've said so far, take them with a grain of salt. I'm no physics expert. I'm saying all these to make a point. Even at the 'end' of everything, physically things just change form. They just don’t vanish to nothingness.

But, there is a concept of 'end'. We all know it exists. To me the concept of 'the end' probably applies to a 'system' or a 'concept'. Because we humans have the luxury to decide when a system is called 'something'. Thus, when the system changes enough, we can call it has ended by the predefined definition. Like when we decide to call a flow of water a river or a canal; or when we call the emptiness above us sky. We know the river ends at sea. Or the ground isn’t the sky. But, the problem with ‘concepts’ is, most of them have a very hazy sense of start and finish. The exact start or end point if a river is not discrete. Where does the sky end and the ground begins? There's a philosophical paradox called, 'ship of theseus'. It could be seen as relevant, as we start to question the beginning and the end of a continuous system.

‘Ship of theseus’ is relevant for a continuous system but it is often brought up when talking about ‘self’ or ‘identity’. I don't really want to go in depth of anything as most of my knowledge is borrowed from a lot of 5-10 min long Youtube videos I had watched in the previous years. Most people like to compare a human life or consciousness to a flowing river. I never looked deep into why they call it such. I just guessed and believed I was right. I like to believe human consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. A meandering river emerges from a system of flowing water. The contents of the river never stay the same, but it is the same river. The constant transformation of the content gives rise to the river, keeping it alive.

I see their comparison with rivers to human consciousness in a very literal way. To me the combination of millions lifeless of physical and chemical reactions gives rise to a living-breathing and thinking being. Something sentient. Yet, exactly when we call someone alive and exactly at which point we are dead, is an interesting question. I don’t waste my time on thinking about these like before, for they have hardly any relevance in my normal life. (they might be relevant for those who work in medical science or ethics; but to me they are just some fun thoughts to keep myself busy.) But I wasn’t thinking about only the end of human life recently. I was thinking about the end in general. Concept of end is given by humans, and it’s kind of easy to understand the end of a human life. We might not be able to pinpoint the exact millisecond when someone’s body has shut down irreversibly, but after a point they are certainly dead. Everyone we know, and everyone that knows us will eventually die. All our actions will eventually be forgotten, and fade out. The concept of ‘the end’ is very easy to understand here.

But, as I had mentioned millions of times before in this essay, it starts to get hazy when we look closer. Every institution we had passed, every relationship we had ended or every time we retired from something- was the end really happened on the last day? I face the same problem when I think about the last day of school. The last days were too much about the ‘last days’. They make it harder to point out the last typical day at school. But there was a last day. However, I don't really know when that was.

A few months back, one of my college acquaintances died. It was shocking. I had almost no contact with the guy. Last conversation we had was about him wanting to put the logo of my current institution on his coaching center. He told me that for this he wanted to put my photo on a Facebook page. However, I wouldn't need to take any classes. But I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of using myself as a false advertisement. I disagreed. The guy tried to pursue too much, so it was a bit messy. I probably didn’t plan to maintain any communication with the guy, yet, when he died- I was shocked. I never expected him to pass away like this. You meet people for the last time one day, without knowing it was the last day you’d ever meet them. You expect them to diverge to different paths, becoming less and less relevant to your life. You expect them to eventually fade away, but you never expect them to die like this. Both are effectively the end of a relationship, but the fact that I can never reach out to them, doesn't stick right with me, even if I never would have reached out given the chance.

I was thinking about the end for months. I tried to write a story- where a guy meets Angel Israfil. The angel, who would play the music of the end. At the sound of whose trumpet, the doom’s day shall start. First of all, it would be biblically very inaccurate. Oh well, that is because it is just a story. And secondly, to continue the story this great angel would need to have a conversation with someone. What would he ask? What would he want to know? Why would he care to know? Sadly, I couldn’t make him sound angelic. So, I just scrapped the story. I was supposed to give a message through that story. I'd come to that later. However, when I was writing the story, I kept talking about cinemas. I am no cinema-guru. To be honest I hardly watched any movies. But I kept on writing about cinemas in general. How on a grand scheme a director can never make enough movies- and the work of their entire life could be watched during a mid break. I kept bringing up movies because that's something that represented our world, through someone's eyes. Yet movies don’t really capture the 'end' very well. I mean, when should a movie end? When the storyteller thinks they have conveyed their message to the viewers. When they think there is nothing more to add. But, beyond the screen the storyteller wants us to believe that the characters move on with their lives. In a movie, most things are shown with a purpose in mind. The purpose being conveying the message. If a ladder is shown repeatedly it might mean something; whereas in real life, a ladder is just a ladder. If you see it every time you look outside, it means the view from your window includes the place where the ladder is kept. There is nothing more to it. In real life, nobody is telling a story, nobody is listening and there's nobody to tell the story to. Things just happen because they do. Yet I wonder, if everything really had to collapse into nothingness, when should it be? What would be the most appropriate situation or moment for the world to end? At which hour of the day should the sky shatter? Well, the world is too complex, let alone the universe. In every moment, the world has almost every kind of weather, every type of day-every type of night, every type of dawn or every type of dusk happening somewhere. It is meaningless to ask about what would be the appropriate weather and time for the world to end. It might end during a very average day, according to some, and according to others it wouldn't be so average. If it ends in a dramatic fashion, one can always argue- the last day of the Earth was the last average day it contained.

In the story that I was supposed to write, the main character would have told the angel, if the duty of ending everything were to be put on a human, they would've ended the world- not for they hated it, but for they cared. I'm not sure whether I stand by these words anymore.