Gulliver’s Travels is a prose satire written by Irish writer Jonathan Swift, which begins with Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput and leads up to Part 4. This satire was adapted into a children’s story and has been read by many children. When I was a teenager, I had a chance to read the full text of Gulliver’s Travels and there was a very impressive part.
The third nation Gulliver goes to after traveling in Lilliput and Brobdingnag is a flying island, where he hears from a high official about the Struldbrugs, people who are immortal. Gulliver starts to admire them, but he soon changes his mind.
At first, Gulliver envied them at the thought that they would stay young and healthy and live happily forever, but these Struldbrugs are old and alive forever.
The Struldbrugs, who become old as time passes, always suffer from illness and often encounter a sad moment when they lose a loved one. Many people don’t even want to talk to them because they have memory problems. For the Struldbrugs, eternal life is not a blessing, but a kind of curse.
This is something to be remembered as an interesting story created by the author’s imagination. However, it felt very significant to me after I received God and understood the soul.
People pursue some things in this world, thinking that those things will be everlasting and unchanging. However, nothing on this earth is eternal. We hear too often about people who lose all their hard-earned money in a moment, or about people who lose their health and suffer as they get old.
Yet, there is hardly anyone who doesn’t want to live forever. Everyone dreams of eternal life since God has set eternity in the human heart (Ecc 3:11). However, they would say no if they were to live eternally like the Struldbrugs. There will be nothing more miserable than to live forever in pain and sorrow.
Thankfully, we are going to live forever without pain or sorrow, overflowing with joy and happiness every day. Our life in the kingdom of heaven, where we will reign forever and ever, is so glorious that even an outstandingly talented writer cannot describe it in words.
When I didn’t know about the kingdom of heaven, I only lived for empty and meaningless things without knowing where I came from, and where I am going. However, Heavenly Father and Mother came to this earth and helped me recognize my true identity as well as the eternal world, and opened the way for me to go there. Giving thanks to Father and Mother, I will move forward every day toward eternal life in the everlasting world, without setting my heart on empty things in this world.