goodandevil

The Good | Self-Preservation

I once put forth an analogy to a friend of mine. If life is like playing a video game, with its set levels and challenges, and certainly its time limits, then Heaven or any sort of afterlife is a similar experience except you have all the cheat codes.

Both are great adventures and great experiences, in concept. As people we are partially sustained by the novel, and we inevitably find ways of seeing what we once called bad experiences for the rewards they contain. It may be hell at the time, but it’s the game that’s playing, so we play it and ride the roller coaster for what it is.

By the same token, the afterlife may be less experiential, but the notion that our will is made timelessly instant seems exciting from out here, usually when we’re in the least amount of control. Maybe I’d like to take a bath in a tub full of jasmine rice (I wouldn’t, but stick with me. Get it? Stick? That’s starch humor.) It may be impractical in life, but after I’m gone, kazaam it’s there.

Except the point of being there would render it not nearly as awesome as we think it would be from here. It would hold a totally different meaning. So while enjoyment is extended in other ways, it can’t compete in others with the attraction of risk and feeling we perceive with the senses we have on Earth.

All that prefacing was simply a lead in to this: When you were at your happiest, did you fear death? When you were at your saddest, did you embrace it? In either case did you know what you were dealing with? Do you think you could?

It amazes me that for all the exposure, and all the relative detachment, that we cannot become desensitized to death. That same friend told me that a Samurai studied death his whole adult life - an interesting perspective when you spend that time preparing for the moment that will both end and define your physical existence as you know it. Was it wasted time? In a strange way, was his experience made richer?

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