What Happens After You Die?

This started out as a joke on my bucket list hub. It wasn't meant to be serious, the bucket list wasn't talking about death in a direct manner, but it got a response from jean2011 about it anyway. Jean said that not many people write or talk about death and thinking about it, I realized she was right. While I had made references to harp music and angel wings as the "afterlife" and thus what caused this death discussion to begin, that wasn't my true belief of what happened when a person passed from this world to the next. So I posed this question to all of HubPages and got a number of interesting responses. Some people had religious beliefs, some people believed that death was the end of it all. And a couple people believed that since they'd never experienced life after death, they didn't know what to expect.

Death is not something talked about often. When it is, though, it brings up quite a number of theories. Some people might not like to think about the afterlife, but I feel it's an integral part of living. After all, what happens if we go outside and get hit by a bus? Or work ourselves to the bone for eighty years and then have a heart attack? What comes next? Has all of our work been for nothing? Will we cease to exist entirely? Or will there be something, someone, waiting?

Here's a take on death after life by the members of HubPages.

Slarty O'Brian believes:

When the lights go out it's over. At least for the I. But the energy we were dissipates and goes on for ever joining other systems. It happens all the time even while we are alive. Energy is always leaving and being replaced.

But there is no soul as far as I know. No one gets out of here alive.

iviskei joked:

I try not to think about it. Lol! I'm sure I will find out once I'm dead.

writeronline hopes:

I dont have any religious beliefs, so I don't have any defined expectations, like heaven or hell..

But I stll harbour the belief (hope?) that there might be something else; that we're perhaps on a continuum, that won't be apparent until we move to the next stage.

If I get there before you, I promise to make every effort to come back and amend this answer.....so stay alert.

nightwork4 thinks:

nothing. you die and that's it. it scares people to think this but it's just how it is. the life after death thing is why religion is popular. take away that and religion would be almost non-existent.

inko said:

I believe that whatever you believe in will happen. So no matter your religion or whatever, anything that you want to happen will happen. I just hope that there IS a life after death. It's hard to imagine nothing.

As you can tell HubPages is filled with a philosophical bunch. We all have our own thoughts on the matter, some the same as others, some differing. Just looking at the vote up and vote down scores you can tell that others have agreed or disagreed with what each poster said. Whether it's because they weren't religious or thought that the opinion formed wasn't the right one, it's proof that while humans are allowed the freedom of speech, not everyone likes what's being said. We try to respect one another's belief about the afterlife, but there's a reason things like politics and religion cause such an uproar.

I respect all of their answers. I might not personally agree with them, but they're entitled to an opinion the same way I am.

There are religions that believe you come back as someone or something else, just living life repetitively. One of my best friends is dating someone who thinks that after we die this time around, we'll be reborn as a plant or insect. To me that seems silly. What's the point of this life? What's the point of the next? What's the point of our last? I don't understand his belief. How did we come into existence? I don't know my own religion inside and out, but to me it provides an answer to all of those questions. I might not be able to explain it well, but even a vague answer is better than the nothingness I get from the idea of rebirth and repeating life in different forms and bodies.

Bi-monthly I settle into a funk where I start questioning the meaning of life. It often winds up affecting one or two Facebook statuses, generating response from my friends and family. They talk about giving your life a purpose and doing what you love, but none of that ever seems to quell my fear that maybe I've got it wrong. I believe in God, sure, but I'm open to other opinions. I'm not narrow minded. I'm not so ignorant that I believe my religion can't be wrong. That's when things get sketchy for me about the life after death talk. What happens if God doesn't exist? What if I'm following the wrong religion? What if everything that happens when you die is the exact opposite of what I believe?

For me, iviskei was the closest on what happens after we die. Because let's face it, none of us have died before and if we have, we don't remember. We might have been someone else in a past life or a plant on Mars. Who knows for certain? So while I joked about the afterlife in my bucket list hub and even weighed in on my own beliefs of what happens after you die, for me this is still an unsettled question. I don't know what will happen. All I can offer you is a perspective, just like the people who answered here on HubPages. None of us know for sure.

To quote Albus Dumbledore, "To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." I hope that whatever lies beyond this life is worth all the questioning, confusion and work. I don't want to die and find out it was all for nothing.

Here's to the next great adventure.