When I was growing up in the religion of Jainism,
I was taught about reincarnation.
That after I died, I would come back to life as another being.
In this sense, I never actually die. I was alive forever
until I broke free of the cycle of rebirth
and, you know, I attained nirvana.
But the whole point of this is that I was immortal,
I was special.
Even in Christianity they actually do something similar.
Christians don't believe in reincarnation,
but they also tell you that you're immortal.
That when you die, you're going to go to Heaven, or you're going to go to Hell, and you're going to live there forever.
And you totally understand why religions
would teach that sort of thing. You know, with few exceptions, no one wants to die. We all want to live forever,
or so we think.
And religion dangles this carrot in front of your face that says:
if you do what we tell you to do,
you can live forever and it will be glorious.
Atheists, of course,
don't believe in any of this. Atheists know that you only have this life to live
and once you die, it's over.
You know there's nothing awaiting you on the other side.
There's no evidence of it, anyway.
You know there's no such thing as "crossing over",
but I would argue that that's not a bad thing.
A lot of religious people
say that, you know, our life is meaningless. When we die, we're worm food.
So, atheist must not have any meaning to their life.
And we know that's not true. Of course we have meaning to our lives.
And, in fact, there are plenty of reasons that
knowing your life actually has an expiration date,
could be a good thing.
Death motivates us.
If you know you only have, you know, a few decades to really accomplish anything meaningful,
why waste your time doing things that don't make you happy?
If you hate your job, leave it.
If you really like someone,
ask them out.
If you're unhappy with the way you look, start dieting and exercising now.
If you're depressed, go get professional help.
Why would you not do these things?
It's not like there's something amazing awaiting you in the afterlife.
Our fate is entirely in our hands and we're not going to get a second chance to do this over.
So let's make the most of this life.
Death reminds us to look at the big picture.
Stop freaking out because you have a zit on your face or you think you're overweight.
No one else cares.
You know that mistake you made at work?
Forget about it; just fix it and move on. Don't dwell on it.
You know how you're fighting with your significant other over the laundry, or the dishes?
Just figure it out and move on.
It's too much of a waste of time to keep harping on the same things.
There are so many more important things to think about in our lives.
And when you realize, as an atheist, that
you know, you're just a speck on a pale blue dot in the universe,
it kind of puts those little things
into perspective.
Death helps us appreciate what we have.
Have you ever heard the saying,
"Live each day as if it were your last"?
The whole point is that you would shift your priorities completely if you knew you only have like one more day to live.
You would spend more time with the people you love.
You would take more risks
knowing that, what's the worst that could happen here?
You would say "I love you" to more people.
Well, there's nothing stopping us from doing all of that stuff now.
You know, knowing that death is going to happen to everybody,
and we don't actually know when that's going to happen,
it's kind of motivation to go ahead and live each day as if it were your last.
So, don't spend time writing idiotic comments on YouTube.
You know who you are.
Thinking about death
lets us prepare for our exit.
So many people freak out about the end of life.
Even when they're old, they just-- They don't want to talk about it; it's too depressing.
But accepting that our life is going to end, means we can act accordingly.
Ahead of time.
We can write our will,
we can make sure our life's work is in good hands.
We can make a donation to our favorite organization.
We can even give direction to our family in the case of some terminal illness.
I hope that when I grow older
I'm not constantly freaking out about all those things I should have done when I was younger.
Have you ever read the book "Tuesdays with Morrie"?
There's this really beautiful scene in it where Morrie, who's really old, decides to hold a living funeral
because he wants to hear those eulogies.
He wants to see his loved ones say nice things about him.
And he knows that when he dies, he won't actually get to experience it.
I actually know a lot of atheists who have done very similar things.
They want to be there. They want to celebrate the end of life, and the life that was lived,
instead of being so sad that it's finally over.
They want to be a part of that party,
even if it's not something people would normally celebrate.
The point is they're not afraid of death.
They accept it.
And it allows them to kind of take those story arcs of their lives and bring them to a natural close.
By the way,
none of this is to say you should end your lives arbitrarily or anytime soon.
This isn't some, you know, video encouragement for suicide.
Like I said earlier, I know there are Christians who have made the argument
that atheists believe, you know, we're just here by random chance.
There's no eternal purpose to our lives. Our lives have no meaning.
So, why don't we just kill ourselves?
That's a dumb idea.
You know, the odds of us being alive today are so slim,
that it's amazing when you think about all the millions of generations that came before us
and how all of them had to survive and reproduce in order for us to be here today.
It's been said before, but we descend from a long line of winners.
And it's mind-blowing when you think of how many things had to go right
for us to be alive today.
I would call it miraculous, but it's completely natural.
How amazing is that? You know, how lucky are we?
So we should absolutely take advantage of the time we have while we're alive.
Do what makes us happy.
And don't stop other people from doing the same.
My atheism basically teaches me to live life to its fullest; not cut it short.
And knowing there's a definitive ending to my life
gives me the motivation to really make the most of it.
My name is Hemant Mehta and I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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