Life. What's it all really about? Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?

Answer... Yeah, pretty much. It does seem to be so.

We are all alive now, writing this, reading this, hmmm. Well, surely if you are reading this, but maybe not for me who wrote this,so listen up.

Considering that there is a universal fear of death and all the associated subject matter; should you make out a will; do you prefer burial or cremation, what funeral processes would you think appropriate for yourself when the time comes. etc etc. Generally we avoid these topics because it makes us uncomfortable to face up to our own inevitable dying.

So, to have an intelligent and uninhibited conversation, we need to drag out the "taboo" subjects", lay them bare, and have a good hard look at them. For analysis and once we have removed the stigma and emotion, we can consider and verbalize our personal hopes and expectations for what will be done for us once our time is up.

The worst scenario would be hell with with the obligatory eternal torment administered by our loving christian god. This will assurredly happen if you listen to the purveyors of fear who peddle god stories and god's "laws" and receive power and profit. Such "men of the cloth" are living lives of privelege hiding behind such nonsense titles as "reverend", "most reverend" and even "very reverend" when they need to really make the followers stand to attention. "Pastor" will do it for the more chummy kind who act like your friend while terrifying your children with stories of terrible retribution for sins, even for having naughty thoughts. This kind of manipulation only works thanks to the indoctrination from birth of masses of people who won't dare to question such far fetched, even delusional, scenarios of how they must live their lives and then, of course, the big prize is that they will win their eternal survival in the after life. Believe that if you like, but it is just a bit too fanciful for me, and surely cooked up by church leaders long ago in order to keep people in line and supporting their business... er, church.

When pondering on the reality of life followed by death, I feel only wonder. I wonder about the many, many people, heros and villians, who have all lived and died before my time. Some who left the world so much better and some that humanity was relieved they were gone. But in the end, it is the same that they were born out of the earth, lived their lives as they did, and passed back into the earth. Some we remember, most we don't.

For me, I surely have no fear of death, but some aprehension of dying. The process can be brutal, the end result unchangeable. Once it has happened, then I expect to be just where I was before my birth - nowhere at all. Just as in the void of time that we all experience in deep sleep, or under anestesia, and awaken and return to "life" to carry on. And this begs the question - it is all just memory? When we wake up we recall who we are, where we are, the people we know, what we do to find the needs of being alive, our learned language and communication process, customs, habits, all the things that make us the personal identity and personallity we each are. If we were to wake up one day with no memory, then there is no individual. We would become just a functioning physical body, but little more than that. Would that not be the same as if the person had died since the "person" is not there any more? Are we really just breathing deficating bags of meat that have a memory on how to behave and learned skills to help survive?

Imoratant to note that it is only the memory of ourselves in others that persists after we are gone. Those who knew us, our blood relatives, spouses and children, friends and aquaintences, will remember and miss us and talk about what good or maybe bad that we accomplished. But once that group also passes away, so also will the memory and there will be no memory left of us in the minds of those still living. The photos and records will fade over time as they all inevitably become less and less relevant to the newer generations who will simply be following the same life process that we did when we arrived and grew up. We were always young and vibrant with so much to explore and do. Grandma was always old and finally died - oh well, she had a good life and it was just her time. Grandpa got sick and died early, must have been his time too, but good now that she can go and be back together with him. And so their lives and deeds are entirely relegated to the past where we can, with the utmost respect of coure, forget about them.

I have to consider myself on the cusp of "going over" because I am now the "allotted" three score and ten years. I am not a bible man, but that book, for all the nonsense that it has inspired, also said this:

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." A nice wise saying and does hold some weight given most people who hit their senentieth birthday often don't get to have a whole lot of fun even if they plod on (with increasing amounts of modern medical intervention) for another ten years, maybe even more, why not? But if you are not too infirm, you will likey be playing cards, not footy.

I hold no illusions about an after life - nope, none, not any, nada, zero, zilch, nothing. It is over when it is over, and it is over when you die, period. Brutal, but if we are going to drag this death thing out in the open, we need to examine it with all our fears and wishful thinking put on hold. This is the rationale that I came to terms with long ago. In spite of what my nice Sunday school teacher taught me, Jesus is not coming to make everything alright for us - to pat us on the head and say don't worry, I will fix it all for you. The whole Jesus fraternity can bleat all they want about faith bringing salvation and when you are in the flock, bleating their tired old celestial dictator stories about a redemption that is simply induced delusional thinking born in fear of the inevitability of death. Down here in the real world where we do live and die, the brutal truth is that the flock will end up as mutton chops sold cheapyly to get rid of the carcass.

Perhaps the pivotal time for me was when my father died suddenly at age only 56, and well before I was mature enough to truly appreciate him as a man and before I had a real chance to relate to him as man to man following the period of father to child. This was a pivotal tragedy in my life and a real wake up call for me on the subject of the life and death. My world view gradually zoomed out and I realized that I, just one of the billions of evolved creatures on a miniscule rock in the vastness of the universe am of little or no consequence in the way of the universe set against the evolutionary time scale.

So here I am, soldering on, doing the best I can to continue to provide for my family, to set things up so that when I am not here to help, they will be able to carry on without any major loss of lifestyle, allbeit that the lifestyle that they enjoy now has been bestowed upon them by the hard work, considered decisions, and good fortune that I have been able to attract for us all. Because I love them so much, of course I worry if they will be okay when I am gone. But when I am gone, they will carry on, as they must do, as I had to do, and no doubt will one way or another adapt and survive and be okay in their own way.

But about my death... no, no fear at all. If the nonsense about heaven and hell were actually where we were all bound, then I consider the company that I migh be keeping for eternity given the rules imposed by those who expound notion that god has set up for us. If heaven is populated with the likes of Billy Graham, Gerry Falwell, and the myriad other mouthpieces for god who apparently are guaranteed salvation and a place in heaven, then I will pass. Give me hell where I can be with Carl Sagan and Christopher Hitchens and all the other critical thinkers who also worked so hard to show us how clear rational thinking can help us through the difficult decisions of what is right and wrong.

I was here, and then I will be gone (or I am gone, depending when you read this). Everything I observe about death is that it is final. No one has ever come back, or even given the slightest sign that they were still somehow watching and caring about what happens to the living. No, I won't be "up there" smiling down with approval if any of my family do something good. Just as with the god of the religious protagonists, there is nothing going on there and never has been.

So, what's next? Well, try the following...

Enjoy your life, but take care of yourself. It is the only life you are going to get. This is not a rehersal.

Don't fear your inevitable death but no need to hurry it along.

Be kind to yourself and all you encounter along the way.

The good you can do goes out into the universe, multiplies, and comes back to you. Your bad thoughts and deeds also come back to you in your life.

Nothing is for nothing, but when it is over, it is over. All that will be left is the memory of you within a few people for a little while.

While you can read this, don't delay a moment longer telling those you love how much you love them. Cherish every minute you have with the precious people you have in your life. Do every good deed you can do while you can do it - talk about other people as if they were in the room listening to you and you can't help showing greater compassion.

Understand that it won't last, not for any of us, so do it now, the clock is running.