It was around this time last year that I shared my blog post "Christmas Through The Eyes of an Agnostic". Over the past 12 months, watching my spirituality continue to quietly metamorphose, it felt natural to sit down and write another chapter.
I was reflecting on life and death the other day on my commute home from work. There's a section of my drive where I curve alongside the Columbia, and on this evening, the orange sun began to dissolve behind the river with watercolors painting the sky of sherbet pinks and pastel reds. I looked at the empty passenger seat beside me and started a conversation with my dead grandfather -- A ritual I've found myself doing often on this particular drive when I need comfort.
"Can we talk about this again, Papapa? I feel like you always listen. You know how I've felt so spiritually bipolar over the last year.... I'm like a squirrel, scrabbling back and forth from agnosticism, to atheism, to nihilism... I'm a laughable statistic predictably following the ExMormon's classic faith journey of betrayal and healing.
"But I'm happy to report, Grandpa, that I think this time I've softly landed in existentialism, and things are finally feeling warm and right-side-up again. I wonder if you were still here and alive, if you would have been open enough to talk to me about this."
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"As much as I love these talks with you, you know that my brain still protects itself. I'm prepared... and expecting the bad news that you're not actually here. It's been difficult. This year I've really been mourning the idea that there's nothing after this life. The idea that your spirit is not actually here beside me. Why were humans meant to grieve each other? Why are goodbyes designed to feel so, so hard, Grandpa?"
It's like... it's like object permanence, right? We're these tiny babies playing peek-a-boo and watching someone pull a toy behind their back, amazed as to how it just disappears into the void of nothingness. And then one day, something in our little, new brains switches on, and we know. We just KNOW that the toy is still there, even though we can't see it. And as we grow, and we're nurtured with traditions and emotionally gripping stories, our bodies cling to that which feels safe from death, and that switch is cemented inside of us. And we can't. shut. it. off.
"But you know what I've been through. You know why I had to force off that switch, and you understand the walls that I've had to build around my heart. I feel like existentialism has been able to gently hold my hand through this pain of the possibility that you're maybe not there."
Throughout this year, I had been trying to exercise digging deeper beneath the surface of my emotions to understand what it is my body is really trying to tell me. I could feel my mind, like thin tissue paper, peel back layer after layer to understand what part of death was hardest for me to swallow.
"I think... I think it's the no longer existing. It's the idea that no heaven after this life is waiting for me. And that grief hurts like hell."
But, by now, the sunset has faded from pink to a humming purple that intertwines into the darkness, and the reflection in the ripples of the river turn a color I can only imagine that the inside of a soul would look like if our eyes were capable of seeing its mystical dimension of energy. And a wave of gratitude for existing in this exact moment suddenly overwhelmed me.
"But what if I'm already there, Grandpa? What if heaven is in everything around me? That stardust that knits our molecules together... Why am I looking forward instead of right here in front of me?"
Back when I would fantasize about what a celestial kingdom would actually feel like, all the ingredients were based on things that I had already experienced in this life. Peace, love, sunsets, warmth, music, laughter, light... It's all already here.
I reflected on the moments that have emotionally swept me away, like my nephew's wedding. Everyone seemed so unequivocally happy. We were all laughing and dancing, and you could feel the thickness of light and magic in the air. I remember that night, a gentle pause where I focused on the joy and tranquility inside of me and thought, 'if Heaven is real, I'm there right now'.
In the car, I began to realize that maybe I could take away that impossible dangling carrot of an afterlife. If I've already reached the ultimate goalpost of a perfect paradise, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything anymore. That fear of not existing somehow dissolves, centering me into the present moment.
I remember once reading Brittney Hartley talk about existentialism as a rebelling act against nihilism. She uses the metaphor of building sand castles. Even though you know the tide is coming, you build them anyway. This helped me decide that if there's no magic or meaning in the universe, then, gosh, I'm gonna create my own effing magic, because I CAN, because I'm a G** D*** artist.
I'm now trying to live every day like I'm already enjoying eternity. With this comforting mental shift, I'm finding myself pausing more... so I can sit on the floor next to my bernedoodle and scratch behind his ears before rushing to my next task. I can take a bite of a cookie and close my eyes so I can bask in the tasting adventure of the butter, the brown sugar, and vanilla one flavor at a time.
Every day I get to design my own heaven.
"If this is heaven, then you ARE here with me, Grandpa. I guess families really do live forever after all. Because these patterns I chose to believe around me, the sunsets right when I need them, the eagles that fly over this river that remind me of you, the Charlie Brown trombone in my heart, your goofy toe that passed through rivers of DNA to my mom through me and to my children, these car conversations, it's all here with me, encompassing me. And it makes you real still."
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