When my son was young, he and I would often play a game on car trips of spotting the newest license plate on the road. We had figured out the sequence of plate numbers, so it wasn’t difficult to determine the relative age of each plate. When I purchased a car a few years later, my son and I marveled at how my new license plate number was among the very latest, but not for long. Within just a few weeks we started noticing cars with even newer plates. Over time, not only did my license plate continue to age, but so did my car, requiring more and more repairs.
It can be tempting to view our lives in a similar way. When we’re young, the world seems new and vibrant, and our experience is punctuated by constant adventure and growth. But as we advance in years we may be tempted to feel stagnant, tired, or more set in our ways compared with our younger selves. This may lead us to conclude that we’re at least partly physical, mortal, limited, and that over time we simply wear out, much like a car.
Such a perspective presumes that we’re grounded and operating wholly within a material universe, where only things we can see, hear, touch, etc., are real, and where everything eventually fades, disappears, or wears away—even things we consider timeless, such as mountains or stars. In such a universe, human beings might realistically expect to exist only for a limited period of time, with death being our inevitable conclusion.
