ManicWorld Magazine

We’re not that far from the outer bound spiral that makes up our galaxy. I used to dream of the future—people on Mars and Venus; I dreamed that they were there long before we got here, too. They, as I would have it, destroyed their planets in some long forgotten war. I don’t know why I assume that alien life must be advanced beyond our years, but I do, and, I dare say, it makes me feel good, too. To think of something greater than myself, that, in one fell swoop, could explain many of the secrets of the universe, and, also, various cures for everything, including cancer, that would destroy life, is pleasing. I want to live as long as possible, and part of me wishes I lived in the future because of that—I’m sure people, on the road ahead, live for hundreds of years, if not longer. Indeed, I think longer.

I don’t want to waste away, but I have no interest in leaving a beautiful corps—unless a person, having lived a life well-lived, can be considered, genuinely, as beautiful. But, that said, I’ll go on living until I experience some eclipse of the spirit, and wind up, then, somewhere foreign, or, if I’m lucky, a place called heaven, a place as wonderful as drunken oblivion.

I think, when I die, I’ll discover that my family is at the center of the universe, and everybody else was just a figment of my imagination—a dream-like report that told me how I was doing, and what was happening both to me and those around me. Would unknown people also be at the center of another universe? Does every family live in their own personal heaven and or haven? What about friends? But, in my case, every friendship has dwindled, and only my family remains. I never had time for both—unless my audience, and those I connected with when I created, were my friends. If that was the case, then I had plenty of friends, although it seems to me that those people were really just family members that lived before or after my time.

I hate the way atheists look at me when I tell them that this life, although not necessarily a dream, was like a dream, and true life waited for us when we “woke up.” I know it’s impossible to prove (so far) but I don’t think it is a crutch. On the contrary, I’m rather intelligent, hardly weak minded, and, most all, determined to ask the bigger questions, such as, “What does consciousness mean?”

I never attend church because, in my experience, the people that do are bad people seeking to uplift themselves on the backs of others—and force out what they cannot understand.

But I feel sorry when I’m told, by someone that I wouldn’t know, that they’re not religious. Religiousness, to me, means we look at the big picture every now and then, like an astronaut looking down on the earth, and we’re filled with wonder and possibility—as well as a sense of great relief, as if those we don’t like don’t have to mean anything, and those we do can mean any number of pleasant things, such as security and joy.

But don’t get me wrong, I value intelligence and love whether it’s coming from an atheist or not—and I often consider the possibility that atheists, for whatever reasons, are really onto something.

We want to be with our families, of course, but maybe there’s no God to enforce things. I like to think there is a God, who, ultimately, lives on some other level, and we, not all the time, but most of the time, are a function of his unconscious. It gives me something to look forward to, on top of the thought that I’ll remain conscious forever.

I should probably keep my mouth shut, though, because there might be an awful lot out there that I don’t know—something that could make death as the end of consciousness seem natural and even desirable. I wonder sometimes, when a cheetah kills an antelope or some other kind of deer does the deer experience a flood of feel-good chemicals, laced with both adrenaline and access to thoughts that go beyond what we can understand when we’re caught up with the so called business of living?

I’d certainly like to believe that since every way of dying that I can think of would be exceedingly painful and terrifying in every way, shape, and form—both for me and those that I surrounded myself with. I imagine there are some ways of dying, however, that are like turning off the lights—you don’t have time to suffer; but everything that leads up to such a death, excluding the chance to reflect, in
a moment, on the notion that our life is coming to an end, and we may never question the existence of an afterlife again, might leave us feeling cheated.