Thinking about Death

We got a Jehovah’s Witness at our door the other day.

He was a pleasant man and his spiel was short: he handed me a pamphlet, told me it advertised an event at his church and thanked me. I smiled, thanked him back and shut the door.

Hey, I know one of his religious beliefs is that he has to go door-to-door. And if handing me a pamphlet makes him feel less scared about death, then I don’t mind spending ten seconds to take it from him.

However, I have never met an organized religion that did not have serious problems. For example, Jehovah Witnesses do not give their children birthday or Christmas gifts – or blood transfusions.

Though these things are deal-killers for me, they pale in comparison to some of the mind-bogglingly brutal things people have done, throughout history, in the name of their religions.

Look: We’re all scared of death, yet we are all going to die.

Even some people who aren’t religious start trading in magical thinking to make themselves feel better. They search for someone to blame, even the dying person themselves. “If he hadn’t smoked or if he had gone for his check-up,” they say, sometimes to the dying person’s face, “then he wouldn’t be dying. I’m safe.”

Nope. At some point, you’re going to die. The best you can hope for, as the older people in my family put it, is “a good death.”

And you are not going to know what happens after, until you are there.

Personally, I’m hoping there’s reincarnation. If I could have a do-over, there are some things – like being a college student – that I could knock out of the park now – and have a lot more fun while doing them, too.