I recently lost a loved one. And it wasn’t something I expected or that I was prepared for. It was out of the blue, out of nowhere, and took us all by surprise. Naturally, death has been on my mind of late. And in a few different ways: What’s after? What’s now? What matters?
I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but I did spend time thinking about them. Here’s what that led to.
What’s after?
I have this book idea of exploring what happens after death and pairing that with how it impacts how you live. I took a stab at coming up with the most obvious outcomes for the afterlife:
- Die and go to heaven (or hell)
- Die and go back to some energy/entity
- Die and be reincarnated
- Die and just be gone
- Die and come back as a spirit (or ghost!)
These are the top-of-mind results, but who knows what’s to come? What I do know is that how we live would probably be greatly impacted if we knew the answer to the afterlife. And it’s interesting (at least to me) to consider what living looks like in each scenario above. What choices would I make if there is a heaven? Or there is reincarnation? I imagine it would change drastically. Unfortunately, you don’t know till you know.
The optimist in me would love to believe there’s an afterlife. Being a ghost sounds intriguing. Being reincarnated is exciting…
