Ideating on the Afterlife
“Nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
Benjamin Franklin was serious when he said this. Serious enough that they printed his face on the $100 bill so that we wouldn’t forget.
I like this quote but I am not sure it really holds water.
Death feels certain, even if you do believe in reincarnation. Taxes on the other hand were only introduced around 3000 BC in Egypt, and today can either be evaded or avoided depending on your level of stealth or wealth.
The second half of that last sentence turned out more clever than planned.
What is even more certain than death and taxes?
That no one has any idea what the afterlife looks like.
I think that even those who belong to the same culture, family, or religion, that even if aligned conceptually to what the afterlife represents, have different ideas of the actual experience of the afterlife.
Contemplating the Afterlife
Personally, I don’t spend much time thinking about it. I figure that if I focus on leading a good life in the realm in which I currently have line of sight, then the rest will work itself out.
I’m a numbers minded gal so I guess in my version of afterlife there would be some large analytics platform that let me draw data insights about random topics that likely had no real bearing on my life.
How many cans of sparkling water did I drink? Plot this over time, slice by flavor.
Show me all of travel I ever did by plane, train, car, bicycle, and foot. Did I cross paths when anyone interesting (or scary) in my travels? I definitely saw a few B list celebrities in LAX over the years - who else did I miss? What near misses did I have?
Some people might think this is sad, but it’s what I think would be interesting, among other more sentimental topics.
Other’s People’s Perspective
I’ve never really had deep conversations with anyone about how they envision the afterlife, though it’s actually a topic that is quite interesting.
What I would be most interested in understanding are others’ perception of the details.
How did you get there - was travel involved or you just appeared?
Are there big pearly gates?
How bright is it?
Is there a sun?
Does the sun set or is it always up?
What form do you envision that you take?
Do you get to interact with others?
Do you have any agency or do you just float and exist?
Two Books on the Afterlife
There are two people I know for sure that have thought about the details of the afterlife. Enough to write books about it.
In my fortnightly browse of my favorite little used book store in London a month or two ago I found Sum by David Eagleman. After I read it, I knew I had to go back to my “afterlife” book beginnings.
I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven By Mitch Albom for the first time in the summer of 2004. It was one of the required readings (ok it was one of four or five and I chose to read them all) the summer going into my Freshman year of High School.
It is the first book that made me cry. I’ve thought of it often throughout the years and knew I had to revisit it after I started reading Sum. This copy too I bought at my favorite little used book store. Books should get second lives and afterlives, too.
Sum by David Eagleman
Sum is 40 short stories over 110 pages. They are extremely short, some of them merely 2 pages. In each he explores a different possibility of what the afterlife may contain or what the experience may present. The cover of the book describes the contents as both “wistful and unsettling.”
Some of the concepts were more interesting than others, but overall what I liked was this approach to writing. Take an idea and force yourself to write it 40 times differently. The afterlife is a perfect theme for this exercise.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
This is written in narrative format. At the beginning of the book we are introduced to Eddie, and soon learn the story of his death. The remainder of the book shifts between stories of the interactions with the five people that he meets in Heaven and flashbacks of his life before death from childhood through his aged years.
The first person he meets in Heaven explains that each person he will meet in Heaven “was in your life for a reason. You may not have known it at the time, and what is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on Earth.”
Conceptually I like the book. As mentioned, I cried the first time I read it - pretty hard as I remember. This read did make me tear up in the chapter where he rejoins his late wife.
Quotes from each book that I marked while reading:
Sum quotes
“The man to your left hypothesizes that everything is cyclical and that we’ll eventually be back on Earth. This appears to be a time-sharing plan devised by some efficient deity; in this way we’re not all populating the Earth at the same time.” Sum Chapter title The Cast
“We are quite satisfied with this arrangement, because reminiscing about our glory days of existence is perhaps all that would have happened in an afterlife anyway.” - Sum Chapter titled Death Switch
“This takes some getting used to. The different beams of you might run into each other at the grocery store like separate people do in Earth life. Your seventy-six-year-old self may revisit his favorite creek and run into his eleven-year-old self. Your twenty-eight-year-old self may break up with a lover in a diner, and notice your thirty-five-year-old self visiting the spot, lingering on the air of regret hanging over the empty seat.” - Sum Chapter titles Prism
“A consequence of this cosmic scheme may surprise you: when you die, you are grieved by all the atoms of which you were composed. They hung together for years, whether in sheets of skin or communities of spleen. With your death they do not die. Instead, they part ways, moving off in their separate directions, mourning the loss of a special time they shared together, haunted by the feeling they were once playing parts in something larger than themselves, something that had its own life, something they can hardly put a finger on.” Sum Chapter titled Ineffable
“Like us, He is awestruck when He ponders the perfect symphonies of internal organs, the global weather systems, the curious menagerie of marine species. He doesn’t really know how it all works. He’s an explorer, curious and smart, seeking the answers. But with enough of our adoration, the temptation overcame: we assumed the creation was planned and He no longer corrected the mistake.” Sum Chapter titled The Seed
“Once every few millennia, all your atoms pull together again, traveling from around the globe, like the leaders of nations uniting for a summit, converging for the densest reunion in the form of a human. They are driven by nostalgia to regroup into the tight pinpoint geometry in which they began. In this form they can relish a forgotten sense of holiday-like intimacy. They come together to search for something they once knew but didn’t appreciate at the time.” Sum Chapter titled Search
The Five People You Meet in Heaven Quotes
“Had he known his death was imminent he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come.” - page 5
“Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always because they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.” page 59
“‘I figure it’s like in the Bible, the Adam and Eve deal?’ the Captain said. ‘Adam’s first night on earth? When he lays down to sleep? He thinks it’s all over, right? He doesn’t know what sleep is. His eyes are closing and he thinks he’s leaving this world, right’” - page 96
“Parents rarely let go of their children, so the children let go of them. They move on. They move away. THe moments that used to define them - a mother’s approval, a father’s nod - are covered by the moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.” page 133
“Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison, It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person that harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.” page 149
