I use a family picnic as (sometimes) an example of one of the most delightful occasions of being a parent with children.
Certainly, the picnics in the middle of a country walk (or a walk around a country house estate) are among my treasured memories.
There was about them a spontaneous atmosphere of enchantment - but there are various ways of conceptualizing its meaning.
In a mainstream, materialist and mundane fashion - a 'successful' family picnic could be described as a form of pleasure; some kind of combination of the biological bond between parents and offspring, and the physical pleasures of warm weather and soothing views, pleasant food and rest after exertion... something of that kind.
By this account there is no extra or special significance to a family picnic - it was nice while it lasted; but in mortal life nothing lasts...
And when the event has faded from memory, then it will have disappeared from reality. The vast universe closes over the indescribably micro-incident, obliterates it - as if it never had been.
Or; we might imagine something like a family picnic among animistic hunter-gatherers - with a significance that is in one sense timeless and in another sense one of an unending cycle of eternal recurrences with transformations.
One picnic is all picnics; and all picnics are in that one picnic here and now. No individual picnic is necessary, none add to the sum of picnics - but any specific picnic is simultaneously all past and future picnics.
Each is different, but in a way that does not affect the quality of the world - which Just Is.
In the same way each reincarnation of each family member is different in terms of the exact manifestation of the soul - but there are just so many souls which recur over time.
There can be permutation and recombination of the specifics of a picnic, but it is ultimately an arbitrary event artificially detached from the unending continuum of live cycling and transforming - neither adding-to nor subtracting-from the totality of creation.
From a traditional Christian transcendent (broadly Platonic, or Eastern Orthodox Christian) perspective; the picnic might be seen as a glimpse or foretaste of Heaven. Its value lies in what it symbolizes, what it represents, what it leads-to.
Strictly speaking, the actual earthly picnic is not significant - because it is transient and mundane. Only insofar as it induces us to think of the eternal and unchanging true-reality of Heaven, to yearn for it, to strive for salvation - does this specific family picnic have value.
Mortal life is - at most - a preparation for eternity.
The earthly picnic is evanescent and will disappear, because ultimately it is not needed. If the picnic had never happened, this would not affect the reality of eternal Heavenly perfection - which, because it is perfect, has no need for earthly things, and can neither be enhanced nor affected by earthly occurrences.
But my own understanding is that this picnic is unique and unprecedented; and adds something eternal to the cumulative sum of divine creation; which had a beginning, and perhaps a different future because of this picnic.
This earthly picnic potentially affects the eternal souls of the participants. If the family are able to learn from their experience now, then after death their resurrected souls will carry the learning from this picnic forward into Heaven.
This picnic has something Good in it which makes a permanent difference, and things will never be the same again afterwards.
Even if the picnic - and what it did, and what it meant - is absolutely forgotten by the mortal humans who participated in it - no matter! The immortal souls of those humans will be affected by it - and the Good consequences will survive through the transformation of resurrection to affect Heavenly life everlasting.
My point? What happens on earth means more than our fleeting feelings in this transient mortal life; yet the Good, significant events of our lives are not merely secondary, imperfect and disposable glimpses of the eternal perfection of Heaven.
Our bodies and minds are temporary - but our souls are eternal.
And if our souls proceed to resurrection and Heaven; then all that is relevant which we have learned on earth will be carried forwards into life everlasting; and will change the nature of eternal creation.
