Georgina,
Without motion, nothing exists. With motion, nothing exists forever.
Sometimes when the answer won't come like we want it, we examine the question. In a sense, your question is; How do we know what we know and what can we know. So I would ask; What is this knowledge everyone speaks of? As animals and up through primordial humans, it's largely a function of cause and effect. We know eating something will satisfy our hunger, shelter will protect us from the elements and predators, companions will give us comfort. As we began to develop culture, we began to tell each other narratives to explain these relationships of cause and effect, tribal histories, myths, etc, in order to explain and encapsulate this knowledge and pass it down through the generations. Even math is a matter of factors and functions, nouns and verbs. This is essentially the sequencing of action, ie. time. So we are constantly making distinctions and judgements, as to what our actions are, navigating through the complexities of nature. Thus our part and participation in this narrative process and the accumulation of knowledge.
Now we ask ourselves as to what the final goal of this is; What is the answer to everything? God? Theory of everything, etc. The problem, as I keep pointing out, is that knowledge is subjective. We can take a generalized view of things and miss many details, or focus on a few particular details and miss the rest, as well as context. When we combine knowledge, it tends to cancel out many of the details, if not blur the entire frame. I'm not saying this from some irrefutable knowledge, but from experience and observation, so if someone wants to argue that knowledge isn't fundamentally subjective, I'm willing to listen, but reductionism is still a form of subjectivity.
The point then, is where does it lead? Marshall McLuhan said; The medium is the message. I would amend that to say; The medium is the message of the previous medium. Much as children are the message of their parents and are medium to their children. So to really make sense of where you are, it's not so much a matter of grand goals, but understanding what is the next step from where you are at? What is trying to emerge from the current state? Basically it's like banging your head on the wall, until you step back and just look at the wall. What is it? Should you walk along it, looking for a door? Walk away, until it disappears behind you? Rest against it and appreciate that it exists? Etc.
For me, when I consider time, not as the narrative sequence, but the changing configuration of what is, I go from walking down an endless path to a goal that seems not to exist, or be on the other side of death, to the view that I'm one with my situation. The same sense of being shines through those around me and I just blend into this larger reality. Sometimes leading, often following and basically appreciating being part of it, even if it's not always pleasant. Think of life as a sentence; Yes it has a beginning and an end, but the real function is how well it serves to tie the larger story together. Our lives are not just a singular path to our fate, but threads holding the larger tapestry together. Some longer, some shorter, some straight, some convoluted, some bigger, some smaller, but each in their space and place, both giving and receiving. We can't destroy what we have, hoping there is some little nugget of eternal truth, or just a hunk of gold hiding in there somewhere. If we do, we will only destroy ourselves and life will find a way to go on, leaving us clinging to nothing.
