I have noticed a commonality between the things I am drawn to, and have but recently found words to express it.

They each have a sense of infinity.

A sense unique to themselves, for sure – but no less eternal or sacred than the other. A touch not of timelessness or transcendence but of endless pursuit, a bottomless potential for depth in understanding and mastery, a felt acceptance that one may spend a lifetime loving and seeking after that something and still never fully understand or own it.

This is one reason why, I suppose, I am personally drawn to the belief in a Creator-God. In the conceptualization of a being greater than myself and the sum of all around me, I believe myself to be in the presence of an entity who by very definition is infinitely beyond me.

If reality could be fully understood if one simply tries hard enough and lives long enough, where then is the excitement and wonder of existing?

It is also why I seek nuance and complexity in the patterns and ideas I come into contact with as I traverse the world. There is more, I whisper to myself every time I learn a new tidbit about the world – there has to be more, my eyes and ears and hands and feet cry out – I shall find more than simply what my eyes see and comprehend, my mind resolves with wholehearted ambition.

Some things do not have this aspect due to the limited interweaving of thought and reality within the particular activity. Or perhaps they do, but the infinity is less pronounced, more subtle, perhaps even inexplicable and rarely appreciated. Western chess is less infinite than the ancient Go/Weiqi, for example; the piano and harpsichord rank below the pipe organ in complexity and malleability; the mind of a human being is vastly more nuanced than that of a non-human creature. Both sorts are valuable in their own ways; both may be necessary, depending on the context; but both are not equal in their capability to offer the human soul a glimpse into the immortal.

One finds this sense of the eternal in one thing, while another seeks it in something else. There is no objective, external meter to calculate this, I believe – what one soul responds to and recognizes as an answer to its heartcry for value and significance is what holds this promise of depth of pursuit for that soul; it might not hold the same or similar for another.

And thus some find in playing the piano a sacred unity to Life others do not find in the same instrument but finds instead in another, or in a different craft altogether. The potential for something to hold a sense of the infinite for someone may itself be infinite when considering the human capacity to notice and care for the nature and texture (and creation and application and nuances and lifespan) of a single pursuit.

In some inexplicable way, one must first love something before this infiniteness reveals itself; and then once the heart recognizes the quiet invitation of lifelong pursuit, the daily decision of walking therein – running at times, perhaps, but crawling too – sets into motion a courtship between a mortal being with the immortal ideals of perfection, beauty, goodness, a dance which births the creation of something beyond one’s self.

Ah! It is glorious when one finds this in something they can do or hold in their lives, like a bit of diamond salvaged from the war-torn muck of daily survival, whether they call it art or therapy or passion or identity or escape.

In the presence of infinity, the soul breathes and smiles, and finds its place among other shimmering stars who think nothing of immortality but simply exist to shine and be shone upon – for in light of love and all that is good and joyful, even death becomes irrelevant.