Not enough sleep night before last, so I went to bed early and woke up here, in the middle of the night. And what thinks have I been thinking …
If I don’t pray out loud, can God hear? If ghosts exist, do they see and hear us? Can they tap our thoughts, so that if I “think” a thank you to a dearly departed, will they know what I thought?
There’s so much that we don’t know about life outside these fleshy vessels. It seems inconceivable that this sentience just stops when the body dies — hence the concept of reincarnation. We must go somewhere when the incarnate self dies, right? We go to heaven, or we hop into a newly gestating being and start the journey all over again?
Does it matter? Does the idea that we — whatever it is that defines who we are — will continue to exist after this life make us behave any differently than if we die when we die? The idea of an afterlife is a reassuring concept — we’re gone from this existence, but we’re somewhere else, “a better place” hopefully. There’s also something reassuring about the concept of eternal rest: Go back to being a confused and naive 15-year-old again, knowing but not knowing anything about how this life works, starting over from scratch? No thanks, right?
It matters, but what matters most is that we make the best life we can out of this one, the one we’re passing through right this moment. Just as we have no control over our past actions, and we can’t know the future — all we have is today, and yesterday and tomorrow are abstract concepts — we don’t know where we were before we were conceived and born, and we don’t know where our soul goes when our body dies. It’s the great mystery, and it’s why we build faith in a next life.
Whatever comes next — whether we go to our great reward, or our punishment, or cease to exist altogether, or journey into another body, or change form like a caterpillar into a butterfly — it seems to me that we owe it to ourselves and to each other to be kind and not waste the chance to make the best of each moment, “to seek out new life and new civilizations” as we boldly go into each new day.
I don’t know how to conclude this thought. Maybe it will take you in a direction I can’t imagine as I write this down, and you can tell me where I’m going with this.
And isn’t it miraculous that we have this thing called language, where these symbols on the screen or the page represent words you can hear in your head as if I had spoken them? Isn’t it amazing that this — LOVE — means something completely different from this — AARDVARK — and we have this way to try to convey concepts and understanding across the miles and years, so there’s a way to touch souls and help each other out and know we’re not alone?
Such mysterious thoughts in the middle of night when I’m awake when I usually would be sleeping. Where do we go when we sleep? Where do we go when we die? Where were we before? What was I doing in 1573? What will I be up to in 2171? What are my sleeping dogs doing wherever their souls are as they lie next to me? What are they thinking and what do they want when they’re awake?
We can never fully know the answers, though we long for a time when we do. May every day be an adventure in discovery, however.
