Life and The Afterlife

What is life? The first time you arrived, the first time you breath fresh air when you were born to this world. There must be lot of things come across your mind when I said ‘Life’, because  you are alive and spend the rest of your life in this earth. You think, you see, and you feel.

But what about the afterlife? 2 simple words: Heaven and Hell. Both start with the same first letter but totally different meaning. No one think, no one see, and no one feel what it’s like there  then comes back to earth to tell you a great story.

But i’m gonna start off with ‘Life’, some people think that life is a blessing and some of them think it’s a curse. I’m gonna be honest with you, no one really has only one thought whether it’s blessing or curse. Why? Because in some stage of life people go through both of them. When they are incredibly happy they say ‘Thank god my life is so blessed’, but when they extremely sad they say ‘Crap, I’m bad luck’s favorite’. Then when you mess up with something you yell to God like this, ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ That is Klise, happens to everyone in the middle of ups and downs.

There is one thing that can make a difference to ‘happy or sad’ thing, it’s the ‘meaning’ itself. The meaning of life you’ve been living to for a minute or even thousand years later. I find myself in the toughest situation when it comes to something meaningful in life. But I do find some great quotes from the people that exactly understand how precious this life is.

“Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you’re tired, go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.”

 -Bruce Lee- 

At the moment I was in a dumbest brain situation, I laughed hard when I looked at this quote. I thought, ‘hey it’s not that bad being ordinary’, but the next five minutes I realized I was wrong. I lost the meaning of what Bruce Lee actually said. The key to this quote is ‘passion’, the first sentence told to be ordinary and nothing special, but the fact is that he told us to be extraordinary. That ‘ordinary’ needs an ‘extra’ so that you can find a passion in life.

The second sentence, ‘eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you’re tired, go and lie down’. how many percentage do you find simplicity in this sentence? The answer is 100%. Those are daily activities common people do. The meaning of this sentence is about doing outside the comfort zone, do something different, something you’ve never done before so that you can find out what big changes happen to your life.

Last sentence, ‘The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand’ Yea I confess, I was the ignorant for five minutes, only five and not more. The wise will accept how Bruce Lee explains that life is so precious, no one should  waste every second of it.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”

-Thomas A. Edison-

As you all know, Edison invented a light bulb, and it shows that his ideas is as bright as his invention. He definitely proved anyone he’s a genius with all those ideas and inspirations. But who knew that Edison used only one percent inspiration, where are the rest of them? Yep, he used ninety-nine percent for perspiration. According to a science dictionary, perspiration is the production of fluids called ‘sweat’, and what’s sweat has to do with it? Because not only inspiration that made huge changes for Edison’s life, but also the hardwork. No matter how much sweat, he kept on going through failures in order to create a perfect light bulb. His hard work has finally paid off,  he got the answer, an invention for all human being in this world..

“You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have”

-Bob Marley-

This is clear to me, Bob told us in order to live a life you gotta be strong, and it is clear that life is never easy. You need a power to turn yourself into a strong person, where in some point you’ll hit a weakness spot. And when you hit that, there is no choice other than trying to be stronger and stronger, like trying to build a muscle in your defense. You can also hit a gym if you want to, literally..

So, everyone has their own way to express the meaning of life. Bruce Lee tells about ‘Passion’, Thomas Edison tells about ‘hardwork’, and Bob Marley tells about ‘Defense’. What else can you tell? There are lots of meaning that hasn’t been discovered yet, you just have to widen your perspective, open up your eyes and realize they are everywhere.

Now let’s talk about the afterlife..

When you’re dead, your soul is going somewhere called heaven or hell. I mean that’s all we know from most of religions. The question is, do you believe it? For me, I do. Both heaven and hell is the most crazy idea as well as human beings existence in this earth. Why I call it crazy? Because none of them has logical explanation..

Heaven, a place for good soul that consists of light and happiness. There are oasis around the heaven, clear skies that you can touch everytime, fresh fruits that would never be empty on a bowl. And maybe, earth is the last time you see the darkness. That’s picture perfect of Heaven.

Hell, a place for bad and sinful soul that surrounded by darkness, the sound of thunder rumbling towards ear that no one would ever wanna hear. Hot fires everywhere waiting for the soul to be burnt into ashes.

What really matters about Hell or Heaven is the faith itself, because you can’t expect to travel there like a road trip, go when the sun rises and comeback when the sun sets, then tell people how amazing your experience seeing a waterfall on sky, or do a selfie next to a Hell’s guard and post it to instagram. That’s not how it works. Once you leave this world, there’s no turning back. So having a strong faith in this eternal thing is essential. But it’s up to you whether you wanna believe it or not. Or maybe you’re still confused thinking about where the soul is going to when you’re dead. It doesn’t matter, take your time. But I’ve got a quote telling us about the faith on this eternal matters..

“Aim at heaven, you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth, and you get neither.”

-C.S Lewis- 

My perspective on this quote is actually about believing in the afterlife. Lewis told that believing in Heaven is something that he must do in order to have faith to do the good things. It is true that once you aim at Heaven, you will always try to do your best in every steps in your life. You’ll always try to consider what’s best in your life by doing good things for you and for people around you. And when you aim at earth, it gets you blinded. Most people try to reach happiness in the way they see them in an ‘earthly mode’. What’s an earthly mode? Basically it’s about ambition on how people get most of their happiness by fulfilling their wants and needs. Sometimes both of them can be deceiving, you just need play it smart to make a difference between what you want or what you need.

So, the conclusion is still up to yourself, but for me, life and the afterlife are both very important things for faith. Because I can’t separate anything when it comes to them, they are connected. When a person says he doesn’t believe in the afterlife, but how about real life? The answer lies deep down inside you. J