Lecture 2: “You Are Eternity, Because Eternity Is What We Feel, Not What We Measure”

Greetings, keepers of stars, seekers of meaning, those who dare to peer beyond the veil of the familiar. Today, we embark on a journey—not along the roads of the earth, but through the paths of the soul, to a place where time loses its dominion, where the hands of clocks freeze, and eternity unfurls its boundless embrace. Our guiding light is a phrase that resonates like an incantation: "You are eternity, because eternity is what we feel, not what we measure." Let us breathe these words in, let them flow through our hearts, and seek to understand what they whisper to us in the silence.

Close your eyes and imagine: you stand at the edge of the world. Before you stretches an infinity of fields, where the grass sways like a sea under the breath of the wind. Behind you, its whisper—soft and ancient, like the voice of the earth itself. In your hands, a letter—old, worn, its lines faded, yet written not with ink but with a heart that once beat beside yours. What is eternity? We are accustomed to seeing it as an endless ribbon of time, stretching from the universe’s first breath to its final quiver. We measure it in years, centuries, epochs, as if it were something we could frame within a calendar or capture with the sand in an hourglass. But what if eternity is not an endless succession of seconds, but a single moment that burns within us brighter than the sun, deeper than the night, stronger than all storms?

Recall a moment when you loved. When the world, vast and noisy, shrank to a single point—to a gaze that pierced your very soul, to a touch that halted your breath, to a word that rang like the music of the heavens. The clocks may have ticked, their hands may have marched on with indifferent precision, but you did not hear them. Time vanished, dissolved like mist under the morning’s rays. That was eternity—not the kind that bows to the clock’s face, but the kind that dwells in the depths of your soul. It does not ask how many minutes it has been allotted, for it does not belong to time. It is like a river paused in its flow to become a mirror for the sky, like a star burning in the night, knowing neither beginning nor end.

Now recall another moment: a moment of loss. When someone who was part of your world departed, leaving behind a silence that rings louder than any words. Time marches on—days pile into months, the clock’s hands move with cold accuracy, the world around you goes on living. Yet why, then, do you hear their voices in the rustle of leaves? Why does their warmth brush against you in the rays of morning light filtering through the curtains? Why does their shadow walk beside you on the path, though you tread alone? Because eternity is not duration, but presence. It is a feeling that does not fade, even when all else dims, that does not depart, even when all that is visible has gone. "You are my eternity," he said to her, and she did not understand—she laughed, shook her head—until she was left alone, surrounded by emptiness. And then she understood: he had not vanished without a trace; he had become part of her breath, her gaze upon the world, her silence that speaks more than words.

Philosophers sought eternity in the heavens, in ideas that float above the earth like clouds. Plato saw it in the realm of forms, pure and unchanging; Augustine, in a God beyond time. Scientists searched for it in the laws of nature, in stars that burn for billions of years, in numbers that stretch into infinity. But it is closer than we think. It is not where we count, but where we feel. It is within us. In how we love, even when love brings pain. In how we remember, even when memory is a knife that cuts the heart. In how we stand beneath the rain and sense that it falls not only on us, but on those who are no longer beside us.

You are eternity, because you are the moments that defy the clock. It is the tears that fall not in vain, but like a river nourishing the earth. It is the laughter that echoes through the years, like a sound reverberating in the mountains, untouched by oblivion. It is the love that knows no end, even when its bearers step into the shadows. It is the silence that speaks when words run dry. If eternity is what we feel, then each of us is its bearer, its voice, its light. It lives in every glance we have given, in every word we have spoken, in every silence we have shared. It exists not in the future or the past, but in that elusive "now" that is fleeting yet everlasting.

Open your eyes, friends. Look at the world—at these fields, this sky, the faces of those beside you. Ask yourselves: where is your eternity? In which moments does it hide? In what laughter, what pain, what gaze does it reveal itself to you? And let this question become your compass on a journey through the river of feelings that knows no banks of time. Let it guide you to where you are not a speck of dust in the hourglass of fate, but a star shining beyond all measure. For you are eternity, because you are what lives in the heart, not what perishes beneath the ticking of clocks. May this thought linger with you, like a light that does not fade, like a river that flows through all things.

Professor Victoria. 2025.