I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I can understand why people take comfort in the idea, both for the pleasure of imagining a vile shit-stain like Dick Cheney getting jabbed in the sack with a pitchfork while roasting in hell for all eternity as well as for the more benign solace of believing that a deceased loved one isn’t truly gone forever.
But surely the most powerful impulse of all to believe is our own mortality. Like Bill Nye said the other day, “Despite our best efforts we’re all going to die, and I think that makes all of us a little nutty.” Yep.
My grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, and I was compelled to go to church every Sunday until I flatly refused upon reaching my teenage years. Granddaddy was an old-fashioned hellfire-and-brimstone preacher (a persona that was jarringly at odds with his non-pulpit manner, which was typically humorous, kind and indulgent, at least toward grandchildren).
His sermons often included lurid details about the torments that awaited those who refused to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. The descriptions of the heaven that awaited the saved were less vivid, and my grandmother inadvertently put one of the first cracks in my Christian belief system when she told me that heaven would be like an endless church service.
“Fuck that ‘sit-down, shut-up and no-playing-rock-paper-scissors-with-your-sister’ noise,” I thought, though possibly in less salty terms since I was around nine years old at the time. “I’ll throw my lot in with the damned.”
Anyway, I’m here to tell you, there ARE atheists in foxholes because I’ve been one, albeit not in a literal foxhole, but in a couple of life-or-death situations. So I don’t think much about the afterlife I don’t believe in. But a couple of days ago, I caught the tail end of the 1999 film “American Beauty,” in which Kevin Spacey narrates his character’s afterlife experience:
I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time…
For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars… And yellow leaves, from the maple trees that lined our streets… Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper… And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand new Firebird…. And Janie… And Janie… And Carolyn.
I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me… but it’s hard to stay mad when there is so much beauty in the world.
Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst…
And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid life…
You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry… you will someday.
That vision of the afterlife appeals to me: the opportunity to revisit the beauty you perceived in the world even if most of your life was squandered on petty bullshit, squalid longings and tragic misunderstandings. What beautiful thing would you focus on?