Life After Death
Or the lack thereof and how we deal with it.
You are not a noun; you are a verb.
Your consciousness is a thing your brain does. One among many. Disturb the brain and you can cause all kinds of out-of-body experiences. When the brain stops… you stop. End of story.
That fact terrifies us more than any other. We'll do just about anything to deny it, but mostly we just lie to ourselves. Reincarnation, ghosts, heaven and hell… I think we can do better.
Don’t cry because it’s over,
smile because it happened.
~ Dr. Seuss
Thing is: it’s not just us. Nothing in the universe lasts forever, not even the universe. Our inability to face our own mortality is just the most personal instance of our inability to deal with the impermanence of things. The real problem is Loss. We can’t have anything good without fearing that we’ll lose it.
And, of course, we will. Inevitably, but that should not stop us from appreciating what we have while we have it. The future makes no promises. We get what we get and nothing more. Letting present joy slip past us, that’s the only real loss we can suffer.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.
It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
~Isaac Asimov
Our own deaths are no exception. In fact, it’s the one loss we don’t have to experience ourselves. The dead are incapable of suffering, because they’re incapable of anything. Being dead is nothing to fear.
The thing that terrifies me is the thought of facing that final moment. Just the idea of standing at that precipice makes my blood run cold, but it shouldn’t. In fact, it’ll be the single most fleeting experience of my life, over before my brain has a chance to process it. In a sense, I won’t really experience it at all.
We should believe in things because they're true and for no other reason. Reincarnation, ghosts, heaven and hell… you don't need them.
To paraphrase a pirate, living is a day worth dying for.
