Final Paper

The End is Near, the End is Here

“I have been living a lie.” This is what I have jokingly said numerous times in my life when I discovered something I thought to be true was false or vice versa. The truth in this statement is what I have learned in this class. Every day the World ends for me. As new truths are unveiled my perception of the World as I know it is altered. As I learn information that will hone my skills for life after school, the lies I have previously believed are devalued and discounted. This way of thinking incorporates realized eschatology into the process of growing up.

As a college student, I learn every day. As a teacher, I will continue to learn every day. A new World will be revealed to me constantly in the form of new relationships and realizations about society as it changes over time. The children I teach will teach me in turn. I will learn humility, ardor, and, most importantly, patience. As these unveilings occur, I will need to understand them and realize their significance in order to fully live. This class has taught me how to do that.

Realized eschatology is the topic we covered that really resonates with me. Ever since I was a little girl I have been terrified of the apocalypse. I can remember New Year’s Eve in 1999. I was at Grandma and Papa’s house with Sarah, eating popcorn and watching cartoons until the big moment when we would enter into a new century. I held my breath at midnight, just like millions of other’s undoubtedly did, and the World didn’t end. Perhaps the World did end for me and those millions of others that night. We realized that we had believed in something that was totally untrue. Thus, what was supposed to be a literal eschatology actually turned out to be realized eschatology. Not knowing that at the time (I was ten years old), I began looking once again for a new end to look forward to with dread. I made the mistake of watching a show on the History channel about different apocalyptic predictions. I managed to latch on to one that said the World would end in 2002. I actually wrote on a bar napkin “the world will end in 2002” and put it back into the napkin holder so as to impart this newfound wisdom I felt was so prevalent. I feel sorry for whoever came across that napkin. I wonder if it led to another’s unveiling of the World.

Obviously, the World didn’t end in 2002 either, at least not in the literal sense. Somehow, this new prediction, the Mayan calendar 2012 one, has taken hold of me as well. Now that I know about realized eschatology, I feel much better about this. Perhaps the World will end that day, but the apocalypse is not going to happen. It will be the same as all the other predictions, the day will come and everyone will be frightened….then nothing will happen and we will all realize we have been mistaken once again. Realized eschatology will prevail like it has every other time in the past.

We see realized eschatology in all of the texts we read this semester. If a story has character development, it incorporates realized eschatology. As a character realizes his/her worth and purpose, his/her World ends and begins anew. Going to Africa is the end of Henderson’s World as he knows it. This is first of many “ends” this character goes through. In trying to become a hero for a village of people and failing, Henderson discovers that he is, in fact, not a hero. In moving the statue, Henderson realizes his strength and becomes “the rain king.” In meeting Dahfu and being taught by him, Henderson learns to think philosophically. These character developments continue on, culminating in Henderson’s realization that he needs to show more appreciation for his dutiful wife, Lily. As Henderson matures and makes these realizations and his World continues to begin and end, he is continuously, albeit unknowingly, being introduced to realized eschatology (Bellow).

Eliade talks about eschatology in “Myth and Reality,” but focuses on literal eschatology of different cultures, rather than realized. In “The ‘End of the World’ in modern art” subsection of his chapter on eschatology and cosmogony, Eliade does elude to realized eschatology-“And, the first among moderns, the artists have set themselves to destroying their World in order to re-create an artistic Universe in which man can at once live and contemplate and dream” (Eliade, p. 74). This quote does not directly talk about realized eschatology, but the part that grabs my attention is the “their World” part. This implies that everyone’s World is different.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, someone in nearly every story is transformed into something else. Realized eschatology is present in this as well. If I were transformed into a bird, I would most likely think of my World a bit differently. Everyone in Ovid undergoes some sort of transformation, be it physical or moral; even Jupiter stops raping women eventually. These transformations lead to a new way of thinking, or a cessation of thinking altogether in the cases of those who are turned into inanimate objects (Mandelbaum).

As I mentioned before, my World ends every day as I learn new information and mature as a person. This may not be true for someone who has a daily routine he or she never strays from. The opposite is assuredly true for a child. A child addresses misconceptions every day. This happens more often for them than for anyone else, including those of us that realize it is happening. Children are truly “living a lie;” we witness this in beliefs of Santa Claus and other mythical beings. For example, the day I realized irrefutably that Santa wasn’t real was probably the end of my World at that time.

Why does this all matter? I guess that is somewhat self-explanatory. Realizing that the World ends every day is important to me as it should be to everyone. As we grow up and mature, our lives are a series of ends and beginnings, some more obvious than others. Some are widely seen, like the end of the Y2K scare and the beginning of the new century. Some are more personal, like the day a person throws away their old conceptions and opens up to a new awareness of the World around them. Everyone undergoes their own realized eschatology, some more often than others. Many may never realize this is happening to them, but if the day comes that they do, it will be an end in itself. One day the World will have to actually end, but until then, it will end nearly every day for anyone who realizes that they are consistently unveiling a new World and a new way of thinking. This is what I have realized. Every day I learn, in some way or another, that I have been “living a lie.” I would not have realized this had it not been for this class. The “lie” I have been living is becoming a truth in that I now recognize it for what it is and am constantly modifying my perceptions of my World to invalidate it.

Works Cited

Bellow, Saul. Henderson the Rain King. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality. Long Grove: Waveland Press, 1963.

Mandelbaum, Allen. The Metamorphoses of Ovid: a new verse translation. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993.