What happens after we die?

I’ve been thinking a lot about death. Like what happens after we die. I’ve always believed in some sort of afterlife. But lately, I started thinking what if there’s nothing. What if it’s just lights out, like a dreamless sleep.

Dreamless sleep is very relaxing.

But I think what makes it feel relaxing is waking up afterwards. And feeling rested. Dreamless sleep with no waking up—that seems like non-existence. Which doesn’t seem restful. It seems scary. Except I guess we wouldn’t be able to be scared because we no longer exist.

My workaround to no afterlife is thinking that maybe time doesn’t exist the way we think it does. And when we die, we kind of experience our life out of time. Maybe as unwilling participants, like watching a movie or maybe the possibilities of our life are opened up, like a big pile of Christmas presents of unexplored chances.

But if there is an afterlife, that kind of seems scary too. Does it go on for ever and ever? Even after the earth is just a cinder floating in space? That sounds kind of creepy. My workaround to this is once again, time doesn’t exist as we think it does. It’s unexplainable until we kind of cross over into some extra dimension.

But if life doesn’t go on past death, that makes this life really special. Every moment. Every connection. It’s like something that nobody will ever experience ever again.

But does belief in afterlife negate how special everything is? I mean if you think of a good time you had that’s over. You can’t back to it. Because you’re still alive and can have other good times—loss can still be painful. Maybe that’s true with moving on to whatever’s next?

A lot of this also depends on the soul. Does it exist? I remember a book I came across as a kid about someone going on a quest to see if they have a soul and answer was something like “if you have to ask, then you have one.” Which I find comforting.

But if we do have souls—does everyone have one? With 8 billion people—do they have souls? And, I’m no scientist, but there’s not much separating us from the animal kingdom. It’s basically pants, ebay and we can make Jell-O. That’s all that really divides us from the trillions of other breathing, thinking things on the planet.

Do animals have souls too? That’s a lot of souls? Or do we share souls? Or do we reincarnate and our souls are reused but in some way that’s not connected to the forward movement of time?

If this point of perspective—another way I see my soul—is so special, and it is kind of strange, when I take a breath and contemplate who is this experiencing my life? If I think as much as I can about who I am—there does seem to be something there that’s both experiencing this and is me. Whatever that it is, would nature just throw it away after a lifetime?

Again, my old “time isn’t what we think it is” is the comforting standby.

The other week, I started getting stressed thinking what if we made contact with aliens and asked them about the afterlife. And they had a definite answer? How messed up would that be? What if they knew? Is it something that can be ruled out? Is it something that can be proven? Either way, it scares me.

I remember when I was a kid and I found out the Earth had been measured. We knew how wide it was! It has a circumference of 24,900 miles. That seemed a little inappropriate to my six year old mind. How much of the world there is should be unknown! That’s what I thought.

I don’t want my world to be fully understood. All the answers lying in a book at the library. Why is this? Why did I want the world to be shrouded in mystery? Maybe because at six, I wanted to find these things for myself. Or maybe I wanted the world to be put together by me and my friends. If the world is defined and everything is known about it—it almost feels like playing in someone else’s world.

I have anecdotes and personal experiences. I watch videos on the internet of people saying they died for a couple minutes and saw nothing. I’ve read books that document cases where people float out of their body as it starts to shut down. I’ve had a couple instances where I thought I saw and heard “ghosts.”

I remember when my sweet dad died and I was wondering why he hadn’t come back to say goodbye. And then I remember how right after he died, the world seemed covered in colors that reminded me of him—particularly his khakis and button down blue shirts. As if he and the universe were one in the same for a few days—and that itself was some sort of message from beyond the grave.

Sometimes I hear my dad’s voice in my imagination, guiding me, offering little takes on things. Is that him? Or just my imagination? Does it make a difference? Maybe not to me, but what about to him? Is he experiencing these things too?

When I was 12 or so I had a dream that I died and I still couldn’t tell if there was an afterlife. “We’re still trying to figure it out,” another ghost told me.