What else is there to life but the choices we make? The movie that flashes before your eyes is your own. The demons and angels along the way come to light only in the clearest hindsight. Our own regret is the hell that we make while pride in the strength and compassion can outweigh any ominous doubt. Success, through your own point of view, can lift you beyond the clouds into an eternity bright as the sun. Money doesn't measure it, but yet the connections that you leave behind. Focus on that personal goal and one can never be damned.

Life after death, such a controversial ideal. I myself don't know, nor do I wish to know what it is, at least not until it's time. Some fear it; some want it; some care not for it. There is no sure way of knowing what is to come, though one thing is for certain: we will all receive what we deserve.

I have not a single inkling of what comes after, but for now, as to put my mind to rest, I believe that we are all reborn. Whether that be a plant, or animal, or another human. Maybe we're reborn onto another planet? And earth is only the first stage. And when we reach the other planets we in fact do remember our time on earth. Who knows? I don't.

P.s. I realize this sounds very naïve and premodern but I think those early people were on to something.

There's at least anecdotal evidence that time slows down in dreams relative to real-time.

So when the brain prepares to cease functioning, I can easily imagine how the consciousness just slips into an extreme dream, a REM stage of multiversal proportions.

As long as you never wake up (and you shan’t), you are forever none the wiser as your dream becomes the afterlife you longed for.

Maybe a million supernovae later, your dream supervisor sits you down in his office and explains to you that this “afterlife” you’ve lived is really just the imperceptibly slow dream inside a brain that is still confined to a dying body. He is confident that you have learned all you need to in the dream, but in accordance with by-laws of the multiverse, you may choose to remain in the dream, or move forward into the true afterlife. He slides across the desk a pendant with a red button.

“What’s the true afterlife like?” you ask.

“Oh, nobody knows,” he says. “I don’t believe it in myself. That’s why I’m still here talking to you.”

Many in the dream wear their pendant everywhere, just in case they change their mind. Few do.

The afterlife. Hmmm. Now there's a chestnut begging for controversy. Okay, you asked for it.

Given that only one person who ever lived is reputed to have returned after death, it is fair to assume that such an event is a rare occurrence. Further, as rare occurrences go, it is so rare as to be reasonably called a one off.

As far as I am aware, no one has ever been in touch with Trip Advisor to rate their afterlife so evidence that it actually exists is thin on the ground.

What I can attest to, is that the only perceivable benefit of death is guaranteed weight loss, phenomenal weight loss in fact.

I am firmly of the opinion that Death marks the termination of all bodily functions, hence doorbells are not fitted to coffins. Beyond that is a matter of personal beliefs and though I am by nature a lover of joking about, I am warned against jocular religious outbursts.

I suppose then that this is yet another failed challenge as I have nothing remarkable to add to the afterlife debate.

Except to say that I do not believe in ghosts, spooks, poltergeist, manifestations or any other such alarmist twaddle.

“A guy once asked me how I feel about the afterlife, if there is one,

I started - I bet it's beautiful, for those that have came and gone as easily. For those that have been humane in this unjust world.

I believe.

I believe after life, is more life.

Maybe if we're lucky we'll come back as things we've once loved.

You'll live on the rim of your mothers coffee.

As sweet as ever.

You'll come as waves, crashing on the shore, then still.

You'll be summer

And winter

You'll be always.

You'll be alive, at last.”