If awareness somehow continues to exist in some form after death, what do you think you’d miss most about this life?
Me? I would miss just being here, experiencing nature.
I grew up on the concrete streets of a sprawling city. Now I live in the mountains. I could never go back.
Trees, mountains, flowers, critters, sunsets, snow, lightning, the beach – the natural world is at once indescribably beautiful, immensely destructive and so ridiculously improbable it bogles the mind. Just the notion of a brain and body capable of self-healing and living for decades is hard to wrap your head around.
I wonder if it’s even possible to envision a world more perfectly constructed. Sure, terrible things happen every day. The animal world can be unspeakably brutal. Not to mention earthquakes, wildfires, tornados and hurricanes. But that’s nature. That’s how things work. Utopia is an imaginary construct of man, not a real thing.
The most surprising thing I don’t think I would miss? Being me. We talk about how hard it is to live with the same person for years and years. What about spending decades living inside your own head? I don’t care how many times or ways you reinvent yourself; that’s a long time to put up with someone, even if it is me.
No, I won’t miss being me. And I can’t say I’ll miss the constructs of man, enjoyable as they are. Once the body starts to deteriorate, there’s only so much food and drink you can enjoy. Work and sport are fulfilling and exciting, but exhausting. Even music and movies get old after a while. Friends and family? They move on too.
Yes, it’s this place I’ll miss the most. Just being here.
Image credit Jason Corneveaux via Flickr
You nailed it, Steve. A big part of our decision to move from Texas to Phoenix was to witness the spectacular sunsets in the desert. The sky is the canvas, and every sunset is a new piece of art that can never be matched. What I’m really going to miss is not being able to see our little planet a thousand years from now. To come back in 3017, and to witness all that has changed, would be like, WOW!
I will have additional thoughts, but for now see http://bgladd.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-speculation-on-afterlife.html
At the end of Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs:
Coda
One sunny afternoon, when he wasn’t feeling well, jobs set in his garden behind his house and reflected on death. He talked about his experiences in India almost 4 decades earlier, his study of Buddhism, and his views on reincarnation and spiritual transcendence.
“I’m about 50 – 50 on believing in God,” he said. “For most of my life, Ive felt that there must be something more to our existence than meets the eye.”
He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds are the desire to believe in an afterlife. “I like to think that something survives after you die,” he said. “It’s strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures.”
He fell silent for a very long time. “But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like an on-off switch,” he said. “Click! And you’re gone.”
Then he passed again and smiled slightly. “Maybe that’s why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.”
Spoiler alert!