Life cycles

What would it be like to go to sleep and never wake up?
To be simply not there, forever and ever?
I have often puzzled about this idea.
To some extent, we have an inclination for understanding it. There is an interval of time between going to sleep and waking, when we don’t have any dreams and there is a lack of self-awareness yet not a lack of consciousness. Isn’t it a curious thought, imagining if this interval were to never end?

This fundamentally perplexing question has generated countless philosophical principles, and is of extreme relevance to me after learning about my grandmother’s recent leukemia diagnosis.

None of us know answer. But there are two dominant ideas about what happens to us when we die. In the traditional west, when we die we go to another life(whether that be heaven, hell, purgatory, or what have you).

I think that a more sensible or rational answer would be that when we die, we simply cease to be. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. People are inclined to draw up a depressing image of this in their minds, like being buried alive in a void of blackness.

In the Eastern world, however, there are different ideas of this. It is generally believed that after death, we are reincarnated into an endless series of lives. For example, in the Buddhist wheel of life, there are realms of existence through which beings pass, clutched by the great demon of impermanence. There is no everlasting state because the demon of impermanence touches the whole wheel, and they all eventually terminate.

Reminded of my mortality, fear for my grandma has taught me how important it is to appreciate the fullness of life. I feel quite helpless being halfway across the world from her, but I understand that some times things are taken away and other times things are given to you. There is a precarious balance between fear and hope; for the moment I will be walking right through the middle, sending positivity and love to my grandma who will be undergoing chemotherapy.