The Afterlife

Today at lunch I was trying my best not to think about Math. As I have blogged before, I currently work for a bank--which is ironic since I don't know what to do.

Every lunch hour, I sit with my friends (from different teams--not sure why we don't go with our teammates) and discuss everyday topics. For that one hour, I get to stop memorizing numbers, codes, functions, banking groups and other accounting-related topics. I cherish this hour because at last I won't feel like I'm a fish out of water.

However today at lunch, upon meeting a new guy (BA major graduate), Math was all that was talked about. Consider this, I am having lunch with three guys all of them graduating from a Math-related course. One was Business Administration, the other was Economics and another was Accounting graduates.

Again, a fish out of water.

So I talked to them and told them not to discuss Math. This is the only hour we get away from numbers, don't we want to discuss something else?

I really didn't know how it happen but while I was in the middle Beef Steak meal, we were debating whether there was an afterlife or not. My friend strongly believes in Heaven and Hell. His main thesis is that if there's no Heaven or Hell, then what is the purpose of doing good on Earth. Also, there's this part about the soul. That if there's no Heaven, how do you suppose will our souls carry on after death.

Personally, I am torn between believing that there's no afterlife and that there's one just not Heaven or Hell but Reincarnation.

This is what I said to my friend.

To answer his first concern, what exactly does he mean by purpose of doing good? By what standards does he mean when he "has done good"? If it's by his own standards, meaning nobody have pointed out that this is good or that is bad--well then good for him. But humans are such a social animal that will want to thrust their standards as the "correct"or "right" standard. So technically, no one is really doing a good thing. Because what may be a "good thing" for me may be a "bad thing" for others. Does that mean that we're all going to Hell?

I say, we would only hope for a Heaven so that this fear of the unknown--the fear of knowing that there's nothing else after all the suffering, heartache, muscle cramps, disappoints, sadness--will be negated and we'd feel that everything we're doing is adding up to something great in the end. This reason is the reason why I think most of us are not enjoying life at the present. We're somehow saving it for something big in the end. What if there's none? So we cling to the idea of a Heaven when we die.

But couldn't we just have Heaven while we're living?

After the debate, we agreed to disagree and checked our watches. We were a little over the lunch hour that we were suppose to take. So we begrudgingly got up and returned to the pile of work that was waiting for us. I actually felt that my body was more stressed because of the debate.

Well, at least we didn't consume the hour talking about Math.