“But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?” —Cicero
“I could not see how much Easy Cheese I was applying to each cracker.” —Hedberg
Where do I begin? Do we end... I’ve never felt any connection with the idea of an after-life. Heaven in its variety—certainly not the self-loathing quilt of Hell—has never made the slightest sense to me; elaborate guesses colored by hope and fear of hopelessness. Each option suggests a place; familiar relationships with peers and superiors; situations, causes and consequences we can fathom. They are the fondest wish for this life to continue and a corrosive dread that, continuing, it may change too much.
Still, the notion of ‘ascendance’ through understanding and knowledge has appealed to me. The suggestion that life/consciousness is a form of energy or field that transits the physical in oscillating waves of experience puts me most at ease. It sounds pleasant enough. But, again, from ‘whence’ to ‘where’?
...
If this place is real; if reality is the sum total of the universe we inhabit; its constituent parameters and parts, knowable and not, ourselves, our kind and kindred constructs, animate or still; all possible... all conceivable… If this is it; now! Gone. All behind. Our futures are fabricated for peace of mind while puzzling over the past. If I am here, then I was certainly and will only ‘be’ but for the grace of maybe?
...
Maybe. As I sit still, here and warm, relaxed in body if not in soul, the odds are good. Who knows? Tomorrow may yet come. A new year may yet ring.
