I’m not one of those people who believes in reincarnation, an afterlife, or anything like that. Are you?
Some people think that’s sad. (My extended family, for one. A lot of them are Rapture Right Christians.) They pity me. They think my life must lack some hope, magic, or some other mystical quality that makes them sparkle with a heavenly sheen while I trudge through mud like a lowly beast.
But I don’t see it that way. The way I figure it, if there’s an afterlife, this life doesn’t matter. The real reward comes later.
If I thought my death would mean my ticket to eternity, hanging out in the clouds, playing harps, and having an amazing time, I’d probably be fine settling in this earthly life. I’d get a boring 9-to-5 job, get drunk every Friday night, and watch Netflix all weekend.
If all the stories of an afterlife are true, this life barely matters. It’s just a blip.
Of course, I don’t know what happens to us after we die. All the evidence seems to point to one thing: death. It seems like we just cease to be. With no more synapses firing in our decomposing brains, I don’t see how consciousness lives on. There’s no evidence it flies out of us like a fairy and joins an invisible choir.
There’s certainly no reason to believe it latches onto another life and continues in someone else’s body.
It’s fun to imagine that stuff, but come on.
To me, having no religion means I have even more reason to hope than religious people, and I have even more magic in my life than someone who believes in an afterlife or reincarnation.
My life is my one brief chance to do something. So, I want to make it count.
Yes, my life is a blip—an infinitesimal moment in the vastness of time. And since that’s all I have, it’s precious to me. I’m on a clock. I only have a few decades to do something big with it. And I intend to work as hard as I can to do just that.
Who’s with me?
I still believe in God. I think people were trying to write about the principles of the universe as they were able to understand them. I call this my Little Bang Theory. Our eyes are like nebula and every part of us look like the celestial bodies we are seeing with the clarity of our new monster space telescopes. I think we are a new way for a universe to be born. I think your energy is going to fly free and expand into the larger space. A heaven, perfect for you, with "God/your source/the universe/the lady with big boobies at the beginning of Heavy Metal". I doubt the butterfly ever misses his musky flesh sack and the sky must have looked impossibly big and open to him. I got this idea from the Gospel of Thomas. It was removed from the Bible because no one could make it support the changes Charlemagne made to get support for his war. I'm in to create some messed up stuff because it is where my energy is naturally heading. I hope we all do things that are out of this world!
Amen!