Simon's Blog

Sometimes you just can’t think about what will happen once you are no longer here.  Just how long will you be remembered and by whom?  The best most of us can hope for is three generations, your generation, your children’s and their  children – its not long after you’re no longer around – perhaps no more than 75 to 100 years. After that you will just be another name that no one will know what you have done during your life.  It is rather sobering.

The reason for this morbid contemplation is that I was in the presence of some of the oldest structures anywhere in the world this afternoon.   The rocks I was trying to capture on Beacon Hill were Pre-Cambrian – mainly igneous Diorites – they are at least 561 million years old and are still here.  Without human intervention they are likely to last for at least another 100 million years until they are finally eroded away.

If these numbers are too huge to contemplate then perhaps another set is on a more human scale. 3000 years.  3000 years ago people were living on and around Beacon Hill and now very little is known of them other than finds recorded in the archaeological record.  Nothing about the individuals other than a few items they left behind.

So I guess the point of all this introspection is that no matter how important we think we are it really isn’t that true.  Very quickly we will be just distant memories – if we are lucky we may be a footnote in history but that is all.  So make the most of your life and the opportunities that present themselves because very quickly we will all be gone.   Long after all the humans have disappeared from the face of this blue wonder the rocks on Beacon Hill will be still standing silent witness to all that has passed.

“Winter is coming” – Jon Snow