Eternity Really?

Whenever I think of time, I think in terms of a timeline - a long line written across an invisible wall with a beginning date (usually my birthday) and an end date (my death, although the exact date isn't yet written down for obvious reasons). Somewhere in the middle is a little arrow that says "you are here". That's my time, my lifetime written down.

But that's not really how I feel it. I think the concept of a long line is a good one, definitive for those of us who have to be visual. In my mind, the line isn't one long skinny line but rather a wide, fat (goes on farther-than-the-eye-can-see-kind-of-wide) line that looks much like the horizon of an ocean. The width of my timeline is eternity. It has no beginning (that I can see) and no end. The starting point of my own personal linear line, which is my birthdate, is irrelevant because the width goes on forever, extending behind my birthdate and beyond my death date, whenever that will be.

This is eternity.

I believe that the souls of others who may have yet to reach their birthdates or who have passed beyond their death dates, dwell within this expanse. They are travelling my timeline with me as I did theirs. Our lives cross back and forth across the insignificance of our own visual timelines and continue to do so well after our own deaths. This is eternal relationship defined.

Could our Deja vu moments with people result from our associations through the eternities? Was I once a spirit sailing on a great ship in the Caribbean and now in this life recall the details of the saltwater logged wood on a vessel in the 18th century? Are the longings of a person's heart for someone they can't quite identify the longing for someone known in the expanse of eternity?

It gives me hope...