Afterlife—Another Take for the Living
A literal interpretation and how to keep living among the living after you’re gone.
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality” — John F. Kennedy [*possibly attributed to Dante Alighieri’s Inferno]
Considering the above quote, moments of great moral crises are opportunities for us to live. Choose to maintain neutrality—in other words, choose indifference, perhaps even apathy—and we forfeit an opportunity to exist and live to our fullest within the moment. You’ll never get those moments back.
So in the spirit of keepin’ it real: It is often in retrospect that we burn by flames of our own anger, shame, and unrest over those pivotal moments of crisis in life. It’s a waking and living afterlife in itself.
On the brighter side, knowing those moments lost gives allows us to recognize, and hopefully compel us to act differently in similar opportunities for moments forthcoming. In that sense, from every moment we have a chance to quell the flames when we choose to live again so long as we’re still alive in the flesh.
Yet let us consider what happens when one knows nothing beyond the consequences of indifference, or perhaps an even more challenging situation: what happens if they know rewarding alternatives to indifference exist, but have yet to discover or muster the elements necessary for sustaining virtuous success?
We have choices as a community of humane fellows. Choose indifference, or aid others in finding, feeling, and walking the path to their best potential.
It takes discerning love to know when leaving an individual to their own devices will aid them in finding the way, as opposed to actively stepping in to help with all due respect.
Do that, and the best consequential legacy of your actions can endure well beyond the lifespan of any individual human being.
The day after the Christian holiday of Easter 2014, I began writing the above. For anyone unfamiliar with Christianity and Easter, the holiday celebrates the supposed resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. There’s a theological parallel: many Christians believe god had manifest as a human, and reincarnated as proof of his divinity.
I started writing what follows below a while back in 2011 but believe it pairs well.
Celebrate the allegories and traditions that are Good, True, and Beautiful; rectify those which are not with respect and compassion. I’m identified as a Roman Catholic, but this shouldn't matter; articulated considerately, anyone can find inspiration and enrichment in Truth, mystery, love, creativity, and reverence. These endowments transcend religious and atheistic thought.
Science is the conscientious process for discerning Truth. Philosophy utilizes science to discern why something matters, while ethics go further to reason what is Good. Reason considers logic in comprehensive contexts. Justice follows from ethical reasoning. Compassion underlies our shared humanity. Humanity gives worldly context to our identity.
No institution, religious or otherwise, is exempt from ethical scrutiny. Religious dogma may be poor when considered in the context of justice, but we must engage each other—we the people who make up these institutions and their tangible governance—with compassion to truly enrich ourselves by advancing our humanity. I’ll chalk the remaining/beginning +/- 2% of life to miraculous divinity, but there’s work to be done and life to be lived while we’re here.
