I appreciate the answer and a little self-promotion is never a bad thing!

We have no idea what consciousness is so we have no idea what, if anything, a photon's experience is but I take your point.

we can dispense with "reach" and just agree that photons (who only know the speed of light) "arrive" at their destination the same instant that they're created. There is no travel time from their perspective. Very sad existence. :)

I'm a lever, not a fighter.

+1. I think that the real paradox is that those of us who live in space time can measure photons whizzing about at the speed of light. A photon isn't a single continuous thing that appears in every point along its tragectory (right?) So it's natural to ask how a photon, from its own perspective, exists along all its paths at once isn't witnessed that way by those looking at it.

Great answer and as a layperson, I think this explanation is precisely what I expect to hear. I understand that it involves a multitude of things that are contradictory and make no sense in reality but it's frustrating to keep reading answers that basically say "this is not possible, stop asking questions".

But wouldn't you immediately arrive at your ultimate destination? Meaning assuming you're going to collide with a boulder that's a billion light years away - won't you hit that boulder the instant you reach the speed of light?

@casimir, and yet we don't keep telling people to stop talking about them!

"can't be conscious" - this is a pretty bold leap given the fact that no one has any idea what consciousness is, how it arises, and what in the universe experiences it. Now - if you say - our paltry minds simply can't visualize the paradox because we were not designed to do so - that's fine, but to decree that consciousness can't arise in a photon is pretty much the dictionary definition of begging the question.

Ah! I found the answer to my question and it's here quora.com/Can-an-object-with-mass-travel-at-the-speed-of-lig‌​ht and (assuming that the first answere there is correct) then my assumption is correct! A conscious particle experiences the beginning of its journey and its end simultaneously with the entirety of the history of the universe passing by in a 0 time flash.

I'm not sure what to do with that answer. But I can flip the observation and ask "how can I - who am not moving at the speed of light and therefore who is moving forward through time - observe a particle which *isn't moving forward through time? For that matter, what does it mean to not be moving forward through time??"