On this week’s post topics, we are challenged to open our minds to a world of learning, curiosity, and mysteries and while there were three options to choose from, I went with option three which says;
OPTION THREE: MYSTERY
If you could find out the answer or solve any mystery on the planet what would it be and why would you like unravel it's secrets.
While growing up, I never really understood what death meant, for me, it wasn’t something I concerned myself thinking about and I was often shielded from the concept of death by my family because in my home it was never spoken about nor was I ever carried to attend burials no matter how close the person was to us.
Because of this, I had no understanding of what death was and I usually thought of it as something that happened to other people but couldn’t happen to those around me until my father died.
My father's death was an eye-opening phenomenon that taught me that while we had life, there was also a possibility of death happening and even the healthiest person could just literally die one day and that made me think about what came next after death because I knew that one day it would happen to me.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER WE DIE?
There are so many assumptions and beliefs concerning the afterlife and I can’t help myself but be curious about which is true and which is not.
HEAVEN OR HELL
For some religions, we are told that the afterlife goes two ways which are hell/purgatory or heaven/paradise and our choices on earth would determine where we would end up, and even though as a Christian I was taught this, I feel like some days I internally feel some way about it because there is so much suffering in life, and I thoroughly can’t imagine anyone dying just to suffer again.
REINCARNATION
There is another belief that after death we go through reincarnation, if you don’t know what that means, it means we are reborn as something or someone else after we die and while this feels convenient to me, I can’t visualize the idea of dying as a human and being reincarnated as a plant or an animal so this for me is just a bit too complicated and thinking about it makes me recalculate certain possibilities.
A VOID OR NOTHINGNESS
Some believe that after we die, nothing happens and it all comes to an end, some say we have peace at this point or just disappear and I find it very hard to swallow this because it makes me then think “what was the point of life” and I know there doesn’t have to be a point but where we just created to die?
I think out of all the assumptions of the afterlife, this is the one I can’t accept because there has to be more after life right? It can’t just be nothing but maybe I am just overthinking it at the end of the day.
ULTIMATELY,
Regardless of all these assumptions, I think the mysteries of death and the afterlife is one that cannot be solved or explained, and we will only figure it out when our time comes to go through it but for now, we know for sure that what happens after death is decomposition.
