Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Life and Death: What FUN!!

Time this morning for a bit of writing. But what to talk about? Politics? Too depressing. Religion? No point - - - believers believe and the rest of us don’t. Climate change? No point either - - - too late to do anything. Death? Ahhhh. Death.
There probably are few things in life more certain than death. It stares you in the eye the day you are conceived, and yes, life begins at conception or before. The sperm and egg are both alive don’t forget. But YOU are not alive until conception, and YOU are not a person until much later. Many embryos are formed imperfectly, and fail early on. Miscarriages are nature’s way of eliminating the “unlikely to succeed” category of conceptions. So the live births represent the most perfect, or at least the least defective among us. Down syndrome for example is a minor genetic aberration since the bearer survives.
Anyway, all through life the specter of death is always just a heartbeat away. For some the moment comes with pain; for some with fear; for some without any feeling at all; for some a moment of clarity. Whatever the experience, it is the final experience.
Now here is where opinion diverges: life ends with death or life after death. Think about that tiny phrase: Life after Death. Makes no sense does it? No one yet has been able to reanimate something seriously dead. So the life after death must be on another plane of existence. The trouble is no one has ever found or demonstrated that there is another plane to exist in. It exists in your head, not in your sky.
The point here is this: You can bet on Death as a reality and you can bet on Life after Death as a theoretical or you can bet on both. In any case the only strategy for life that makes sense to me is to live it while you are living, and don’t wait to “live life” after you die. There is likely nothing there after you die. Have fun now. Have friends now. Have love now. Have beer now.
IPA in heaven? I doubt it very much.
Image: http://www.metal-archives.com/images/4/3/6/2/43621.jpg

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