Tales from the afterlives

Posted on September 6, 2010 in My readings

For some weird reasons, friends tend to buy me books when they want to get me something nice even tho my amazon wish-list clearly states that i want a Cessna 182 small personal driven plane . I always get ignored, but what can one do with such sucky friends, i learned to move on and read those books *sigh* and in order to brag and look educated and such i decided to add a small section to this blog called my readings where i share stuff that i read and write up a small review. those reviews will mostly help me self-reflect on the book and hopefully motivate someone else to read as well . I am starting the series by :

Sum, forty tales from the afterlives
by David Eagleman

I got this book from an existentialist friend @joellehatem – first i was a bit reluctant on reading it – I am feeling bit touchy about stuff on “afterlife” specially now and i was worried it ends up like those philosophy/religion books all blabering and complex bullshit theories :) but after reading the first 2-3 pages I was totally hooked and knew that this book is gonna quickly become one of my top favorite books :)

This book has forty tales each 2 or 3 pages long. each tale tells you what happens when you die. The stories are amazingly smart and genius, in my opinion each 2 or 3 pages speak about life – not the afterlife- more than loads of volumes written by others and the beauty of it is that you are left to meditate on the meaning of those funky/unusual tales who offer a new perspective on a topic not-often reflected upon (at least by me)

I really really really highly recommend this book, like honestly read it ! and to have a little fun, I asked @joellehatem if she is interested to write up her own tale of afterlife – sadly she doesn’t seem to have the time, so i decided to write up a tale for her .

Afterlife tale number 41 :
There is no “one” afterlife that fits everyone. each person is unique and each of us gets their own version of afterlife.afterall we all have our personal demons and our “over the clouds” moments.

So i can’t really tell you what happens in the afterlife in general , but rather zoom in and tell you the afterlife of a specific person.
Just as a totally random example,totally random, here what would be the afterlife of an OCD existensitatist , for the sake of an easier story telling, let us suppose their name was @joellehatem :

Heaven :
Existentialists are one of the few people who welcome afterlife with un-matched curiosity and eagerness because it offers answers to long dwelled-upon questions. questions like why are we here ? are we here ? where is here ? why aren’t we somewhere else? what is somewhere else ? blablabla….

so in their heaven, existentialists get all their answers, clear definitive answers.
When the first existentialists went to heaven, god was happy to interview them in person, he thought their questions were cute and their eagerness to listen to him was heart warming. Having someone who actually cared and questioned what he did seemed nice for a change and god welcomed his smart subjects and enjoyed the conversation.
However, as the existentialism trends grew on earth, more and more of those started going to heaven, the questions became harder and so many, god either got tired of repeating stuff over and over again or found some questions embarrasingly hard.
so god eventually spared himself the trouble and assigned each existentialist a guardian angel whose mission was to answer those never ending questions and musings. he chose the smartest and wisest of all angels but those damn existentialist were never satisfied and they started to form existentialist clubs where they got together , discussed stuff , read books and formed committees to debate different answers.

so when our joellehatem dies, if she goes to heaven, she will be first received by an old wise angel who will hand her a free subscription to the existentialist library where she gets to search and read all the answers on her mind in the great book, reviewed by god himself called :the answers to life , the universe and everything else.
It is not really one book that you can put in your handbag, it is more like a collection of chapters spread across aisles and aisles in the library.
the wise old angel will be there for her to answer any question she wants – if he can -

Hell:
Now let us suppose joellehatem went to hell – here is what her hell would seem like.
First, at the front door, there is a weird sign that says
Joelle at first frowns, shrugs and ignores the sign . as the devil in person opens the door for her, she notices a weird change, she is suddenly gone mute. it will take her a minute to realize what is happening, she has not gone mute exactly, but actually she can’t say “thank you” for someone who opened the door for her (regardless, if it was the door of hell or not ). so first thing in hell : no thank you

Joelle then enters somehow a messy room, with tons of books in it and the devil leaves her alone with a wide smirk upon his face. she thinks for herself, this is not bad for a hell, i just can’t say thank you, that is all ! and it is not long before she gets bored, and wants to start reading.
as she wanders in the room, first she notices that all the books are in their wrong sections, she tries to rearrange them, but to no avail, the books magically return to a more chaotic distribution each time she tries. she then notices that the covers of the books are different from the books themselves and it is an impossible task to tear off the covers and re-arrange them all . the OCD in her roars in anger and almost swears at the devil, almost swears because she catches herself, the devil gave her books eventually, she is almost feeling thankful for him, only if he didn’t pull that OCD trick on her. *sigh* so she sets her mind to start reading to ease down the anger.
As she starts her first book, she suddenly understands the reason behind the wide smirk of Mr Devil. each and every book contains existentialist thoughts and questions that have not occurred to joelle yet, many answers for each question are discussed, yet each answer is proven wrong and each book promises that another book can really answer those questions
joelle will not be really able to stop reading, the more she reads , the more her angst will grow, the more she will know what she does not know.
in this room, she is alone, tortured by her own mind, what kind of a more cruel hell you want for an existentialist ?

and the lesson from this afterlife tale is ? : never buy me books :P