Naturally, at the end of time, it was delightful to encounter its beginning. Indeed, this discovery was more delightful than discovering, a few decades ago, that everywhere at the end of space is, also, simply the beginning of space.

It is easy for me to liken our ancestor's discovery of Earth being a sphere with our discovery of the universe's spatial geometry being some strange pretzel folded onto itself. The similarities are abundant — our data initially was indirect, noisy, unable to rule out competing hypotheses and the idea's pursuit worthiness was not worth its career risk. However, finding an appropriate analogy for having mapped the knots and loops of time is a far mightier challenge.

I consider our discovery about the shape of time to be a radically different realization compared to the shape of space. First, the accidental nature of this discovery was, by the standards of the history of physics, uncharacteristically delivered with the concreteness of a physical proof. It is as if we first discovered that Earth is round, not via carefully observing anomalies in heaven but by accidentally completing a circum-navigation voyage. Second, at least to me, the shape of time imposes a philosophical constraint much stronger than every other great physical doctrine.

A naive pessimist's interpretation of time being a closed loop (however, richly structured) is seeded in the inevitability of everything. Large sects of religious and scientific scholars alike, citing social irresponsibility, have harshly criticized the COMPACT Collaboration for publishing their findings.

I wonder how strange someone must be, to read the eternal rhythm in the dance of reality and despair for not being on the stage? Especially, given that the stage of reality is no more separated from us than we are separated from reality. As we flow along eternal time, eternal time invariably must flow with us. There is no greater free will to be desired beyond the fact that our wills are categorically fused with the global structure of space and time.

For those suffering from the psychological affliction of 'Temporal Pessimism', I believe there is no cure to be delivered in words. Instead, the key to deriving delight from the inevitability of everything is, perhaps, only an internal and intangible maneuver, some form of non-symbolic, non-conceptual shift in perspective. There is a vantage point, grounded in consistent (albeit, incomplete) formal reasoning which yields a view of our closed universe, where the grand circle of time is not suffocating but cozy. There exists a framing of the totality of our facts which induces not a sense of dread but, instead, a deep seamless cohesion with all there is.

Perhaps, like there was more to be known about our universe beyond the surface of Earth, our scientific successors might catch a glimpse of something we have missed allowing them to stretch unconfined to wider patches beyond our manifold of being.