Death: Being and Not Being

Mozart wrote the Requiem (at least the part he was able to complete) on his deathbed. He died young, but his life's work has remained ageless. Even the rumors surrounding his death remain vibrant. Mozart has achieved a type of immortality, yet his corporal body and essential self is no more. He met our inevitable end.

Religion has offered hope to many in the form of an afterlife. At a recent Memorial Service I attended, the speaker depicted the type of heaven I'd appreciate. In his Heaven we return to our most beautiful state and no longer suffer pain, crippling, or any other malady, and we will be greeted by our most beloved ones who have already passed on to Heavenly life. The reward for our earthly suffering and good works will be eternal bliss.

Faith and belief are critical to heavenly reward. Yet, in our day of evangelical extremism, factious Christianity, Islamic jihad, and irrational defense of god's will, it is difficult to have faith and belief in the God(s) of World Religions, after all, He seems at war with himself.

If God wants us all to be saved, why would He create diverse major religions with further divisive sub categories, with each claiming to be the one true religion? The claim that God acts in mysterious ways is not good enough.

Furthermore, why create an afterlife pictured much as we know material existence, but honed to a paradise unrealized on earth? Heaven is hope that the irrational suffering humans undergo will be erased, and that eternity will be joyful. Death becomes desirable.

Existentialism, following the irrationality of the Second World War, held a view that god, for all practical purposes, was dead. Hope of life beyond this worldly sphere also died.

What is the truth? Is there life after death? If so, what is it like? The ancient depictions of Heaven no longer ring with truth or self-evidence. The modern depiction of a self created Hell on Earth, is self-evident, but contains little hope or an imaginative, yet realistic, depiction of afterlife. Modernity leaves us with Being and Non-Being.

Shakespeare's Hamlet contemplated Being or Not Being, and gave us rational fear of death, “What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil?” While worms crawl about our skull, our soul may be caught in an eternal nightmare. This is an undesirable death.

Well, we can say with certainty that our body will decay and become part of the earth and, thereby, continue within the framework of this vast, unknown universal body called the cosmos, to live. That great lives and souls such as Mozart and Shakespeare will continue to live in the hearts and minds of people as long as our civilization exists. That we, for good or ill, will be remembered by our friends and family, and, hopefully, some of the best of our nature will nurture our children and be passed on to their children, and their children's children. Our body's will rot, but our lives do impact the future. Neither desirable nor undesirable, Death is inevitable.