The afterlife and eventual resting place

So after receiving an email from a friend asking me what I thought of the afterlife I started thinking about it all over again. I hail from a religious family, who practice their religion quietly and with minimum disturbance. So growing up I was instilled with strong notions of faith, and as I grew up more they were slowly morphed into a rigid set of beliefs.

Very important among them was to have faith in afterlife, and I think most of my life I liked that particular belief. In more ways then one, it gave purpose to this life, but as I grew up even more, I realized that it also laid life out as a program (not TV, but say C++) and defined it in terms of things to do and not to do. Again I have no qualms about that as most of the “to do’s” agree with the generic sense of morality that I now feel prevails on our tiny planet.

But somehow we have found ourselves in a time where the promise of a good afterlife makes you walk into places and do extremely stupid things, in the name of a goal far greater then life itself. Now that is where I draw the line. Not in a million years can I even begin to feel that, that is a path worth pursuing.

I don’t know what my exact thoughts on afterlife are, but I can at least say what I want. I would want my soul to fizzle away the moment I stop breathing. I would want it to evaporate into thin air and not become part of any cycle. Remember all the cycles we’re drilled with in class. The oxygen cycle, the water cycle, and so on and so forth. And then there’s the circle of life from Lion King (even though even that was more of a cycle)…so no part in any form of a cycle for me, just the quick and peaceful fizzle.

And I am not among those who long for the long infinite, I like the fact the I have a finite existence, just seems more manageable. Would I really want to go on forever in utopia? No I won't! Neither would I want to go on forever in the bonfire of the vanities!

I do however like the notion of being buried. But I would prefer to be buried in a wild rain forest where I can become part of the trees and the weed. No cemeteries for me please, with the well trimmed grass and neatly laid out walk ways within. It just feels so much better to become part of something dictated only by the laws of nature (rain forest) and free from the limiting limitations of mankind! And besides no one would visit to pay respects, and that would be great.

I don’t want the people who have seen me alive and laughing and breathing to be looking at a tombstone and a hump of mud and trying to relate to that in terms of me. So let me just say now, that is not me. The “me” was what you knew, loved or hated, or were indifferent to, but that tombstone and hump of mud…definitely not!