Word of the Day: Doom

My writing prompt for today is the word "doom".

Since I don't have much context to roll with I'm just going to map out the word and see where that leads me.

When I think of doom I receive a mental freeze-frame image of a huge bomb that just exploded forming a mushroom cloud. Or maybe my brain's thinking of the word boom...

Doom is tricky because it sort of involves the future. When someone says, "I'm doomed", they aren't describing a current state as they would be with the phrase "I'm cursed" or "I'm screwed" but more like an implication of "I'm not going to be able to overcome this". Which is a funny thought when you take something like the Soul into consideration.

Doomed implies finality. Something bad and foreboding will happen and it will bring about a tragic end of some sort. If the planet is doomed that means it will end. You can't come back from doomed. If we are doomed to repeat history, it will happen and we will suffer the consequences. It's a certainty and a future tragedy. But the future is never certain, so saying something is doomed has to mean it will beyond all doubt or beyond most reasonable doubt actually happen. Otherwise you'd just be saying "Well I guess something bad might happen if such and such happens".

Humans, the Planet, and especially things that are eternally infinite like the Soul have no real end. Humans may be doomed to die one day physically, but their souls will always live on. Earth may be doomed and burned away into oblivion when the sun, a star, reaches it's final stage and dies. But that's not for a while. We can say Earth is doomed to die one day, which it will, but we cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that that time will be anytime soon. Humans would die long before the Earth itself would.

So doom is kind of a distant foreboding that doesn' really amount to much.

It is an obvious statement since it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt to occur.

It is a hopeless statement since it suggests there is nothing it can be saved from -like a curse that can't be lifted. It implies an END event.

 But since we are human, aka enfleshed SOULS, which are forever and cannot end or be destroyed -"doomed" doesn't and shouldn't mean much to us. When you think in terms of forever, yah there may be some tragedies and suffering a soul has to endure, but it is never "doomed" or beyond some sort of salvation. Doomed implies it cannot be reached, changed, or fixed. But things that never end, do not end. And if a soul continues existing, how can it be "doomed"? For a soul to be doomed it would have to end.

But then there's also the phrase "doomed to...". You are doomed to wonder the earth forever never reaching your goal. You are doomed to suffer from the choices you make today. "Doomed to..." changes the situation. Suddenly the noun isn't doomed in the sense that it will end in some way, but instead is just going to experience something awful. There isn't necessarily an implied "end" or even a "distant future".

Souls can be doomed to certain fates so if people should give a damn about the word "doomed" or anything to do with it, it's what places, people, animals, or things can be doomed to. Basically it's a Cause and a Negative Effect. A Warning. Not a certainty, but a foreboding. People as souls should always be concerned with dangers and tragedies that might occur if an action, thought, or belief they carry out has a negative impact.