Life After Death

“It comes to life!” is the tagline for the 1932 film The Mummy. It seems a pretty straightforward statement. But although death does not appear in this tagline, this statement is really about death. “The mummified remains of some dead person are now alive again, freed from death.

“Death is only the beginning” is one of the taglines for the 1999 version of The Mummy, in which Imhotep speaks those very words as he succumbs to death for a second time. And I wonder, “The beginning of what exactly?”

For millennia, people have claimed knowledge of what came before and what comes after. I do not profess any such knowledge.

Per my Catholic upbringing, I should believe in either a lovely or a terrible hereafter based on the life I'm living here and now. Hindus believe in reincarnation and karma where the goal is to escape that very cycle. The ancient Egyptians believed in arriving at the afterlife with a well-mummified body, a guilt-free heart, and the right knowledge from the Book of the Dead in order to live again.

Here is the truth that I do know:

I don't know what the heck happens after death. I don't know if I'll be needing any or all the parts of my body. I don't know where my soul will go or whether it will need my body, a body, any body. And I don't want to know.

Just as I don't want to dwell on how I'll die, I don't want to dwell on what, if anything, will happen afterward. I don't want to live this life always planning for, worrying about, or hoping for the next.

Here are some other truths I do know:
- I want to be now the best that I can be instead of having regrets later.
- I want to enjoy this level/life/existence because in any other that may come I'm not likely to know that I'm there rather than here, remember what came before, or wonder if there will be another.
- I want to enjoy this life in present sight instead of in hindsight because coulda, woulda, shoulda doesn't make anybody happy.

Now you, you can believe whatever the heck you want.