Question
Aferlife
What is your concept of an afterlife if you believe in such a thing?
I find out here on the Edge, for the most part, the concept is of a life just like ours here on planet earth, bingo is still played, pubs still attended, birthdays (the earthly variety) still celebrated and Facebook is used as a message centre for the Great Beyond. As in "Happy birthday Dad in heaven, I know they have your favourite beer up there!". "Happy anniversary Mom, are you now baking your pies for God/Jesus?" I have yet to see a response, but it would be lovely just to see the reaction.
As for me, I believe we live on after we die in our very original form, as in stardust, I can't ever imagine us rising from the dead on Judgement Day and the concept actually gives me the willies.
This one wild and wonderful precious life is all we have I think. But I am always interested in others' beliefs.
But I also believe there are billions of other planets, like ours, many far more evolved where time travel exists and I like playing around with that concept in my head. As in our planet keeps going back to square one and a massive culling takes place every couple of hundred thousand years and yes, time travellers from the past walk amongst us watching in disbelief as we continue to eff everything up yet again.
I look out my window tonight at a sunset of rose, the wise crows perch on the wires and the gulls soar overhead, with a pink blush drowning the white of their wings and I am gobsmacked at the beauty. And I wonder if the Trumps and the Johnsons and the Putins et al were forced to watch such magnificence would it change their view of this world. But somewhere deep inside, I know it wouldn't. We are accelerating towards climate collapse at an ever faster rate and the kings will stay in their counting houses. And yes, they would shoot those goddamned birds for sport.
Ashes and dust, my afterlife. This is as good as it gets and I won't have a second chance.
ReplyDeleteI believe we return to the earth/cosmos and that's the end of it.
ReplyDeleteAshes and dust from me too. Which is one reason I really would like an ecofuneral and to have my remains feed a tree.
ReplyDeleteThat is an incredibly beautiful photo and sadly I believe your final paragraph to be true. Our Prime Minister wouldn't shoot the birds (I don't think) but he will happily approach his end (and the world's) convinced that he at least is going to a far better place.
Ashes and dust and a return to the universe. I do like to think on occasion an atom pings a flash of recognition in a passing, well meet again sort of way with another atom out there in the ever expanding universe.
ReplyDeleteI like your time traveller theory, but if they are watching us eff it all up again, why don't they step in and correct us? Or do they and we are just too stupid to listen?
ReplyDeleteI believe our souls get born again, even more so after hearing my daughter's father-in-law say about our grand daughter, "she is so much like my mother it's scary!"
I'm also thankful that my younger grand daughter was born several hours earlier on the same day my mother died. N would already have a soul at birth, so she couldn't get my mother's.
I wish that I had your flight of imagination about my afterlife. I am however conditioned by Vedanta and as such hope that with the end of this life, I will be free from the cycle of birth and death. We call it Moksha. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha
ReplyDeleteI don't have a firm belief about it. I don't know, so I try to stay open-minded. Could be this, could be that. Always interested in other people's expectations and experiences of communication with the "dead," which can be awfully convincing. -Kate
ReplyDeleteI believe in spirituality. There is more to earthly life than physicality. Our bodies will die, but not our spirit.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to believe in reincarnation, simply because I'd like to do it all over again. But then, I'm not very imaginative.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what I think on this, WWW. I want to think that some part of us lives on, perhaps as part of another person sometime later - years, decades, centuries & more (?) later. When we meet someone and have that very odd feeling that we've known them before - in some role or other - well - as the song goes, "Who knows where or when?" We ought to be recycled, I feel certain that the universe re-cycles, so.... :-)
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't believe in an afterlife, except as some form of energy that's released from my dead body. I have an interesting fantasy that this life is simply a dream in someone else's life (and so on and so forth).
ReplyDelete