For most people in the Western world, and for many people in the Eastern world as well, there is some expectation of a paradise after death, of a heaven. Some people are looking forward to this a lot and some people are enjoying his life but the thought of an eternal paradise is in the back of their mind and makes them smile to think it's coming.
Let's say there is a heaven, and let's say it is a paradise, a place where we no longer have to deal with sickness or death and all our needs are met. And it is forever. What exactly do we expect from this?
Well... to be happy, I think. But what does paradise have that will make us happy?
Time, am I right? All the time to read all the books we always wanted to read but didn't have time for, distracted by work or kids or a tiredness that never allowed us to keep our eyes open longer than two pages in. In heaven, we will have time! All the time! Forever, meaning time no longer really has any meaning, for it will never run out. We will have time to read all the books we ever wanted to. Then reread them. Then re-reread them. Then re-re-reread them.
If those books start to get a little boring, we can move on to other books. We can explore new subjects that we were never interested in on Earth, we can discover new authors, we can learn to enjoy new genres. In fact, we have forever, remember?—we can read (and reread, and re-reread) everything.
Then what? Forever, remember? There are more more books left to read, no more essays published or unpublished, no more blog posts, no more magazine articles. We've read them all. Our favorites we've read so many times we have them completely memorized, word for word.
Move on to our favorite movies, I'll bet. We never had enough time to watch even a fraction of the new ones that were released each week, nor did we even have time enough to revisit old favorites as often as we wanted. Well, now we have forever, so we can watch them all. We can watch everything. And rewatch. And rewatch. And rewatch.
What next? By this point I can imagine reading through a book for the millionth time (any book; we've read them all, remember) might get a little boring. Same for watching movies.
Move on to learning a new skill. All of us have some skill or another that we've always admired and always wished we had time to gain some mastery in. Woodworking, or painting, or growing a bonsai tree. Well, now we have time to do that. In fact, we have all the time; we have forever.
I think we can see where this is going. Eventually we will master the skill, we will master it to the point where there is no challenge in even the most complex application of it. It would be like blinking, like snapping our fingers, so easy and so intuitive that it becomes utterly boring.
Move on to another skill. And another. And another. Master them all to the same level. We have forever, remember? Even the least skilled amongst us can master something after doing it for a billion years. A million million. A million million million. Forever.
When faced with forever, all of us will eventually know everything and be able to do everything. Gods? Maybe not the same as the big guy, maybe we can't create life (then again, maybe that is one of the skills we gained by studying it for countless aeons) but we will certainly be something of that level.
And then what? Most of us get bored out of our minds after a few days on vacation and start to long for the challenges of regular life. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest we might start to get bored of the ultimate paradise too. So what then? Do we start to long for normal, regular life with all the challenges therein?
What do gods do when they grow weary of knowing everything?
Do we then cause ourselves to forget it all and be reborn to start the entire adventure again?