I’m On My Fourth Life. How About You?

I totally don’t believe in reincarnation, but just imagine if I did. Penelope Cruz said it best at the end of Vanilla Sky, when she told Tom Cruise, “I’ll tell you in another life, when we are both cats.” So, I thought about it. Cats are supposed to have nine lives, so they don’t quite fear death as much as people do, or at least that’s how the story goes. Of course, if you were a cat, and you were on your seventh life, you might start worrying, but probably only then. And there are many different types of reincarnation that people can believe in. There’s one where you remember all your previous lives, and there’s one where you don’t. That made me think about the advantages and disadvantages to this first type of reincarnation, because there are both pros and cons. I know, it doesn’t seem like it, but it’s true.

Advantages:

=> Duh. Death in this life wouldn’t be your only death, so you would be able to enjoy life more without being afraid of death.

=> You would have a wealth of memories to tap into, so you would be relatively smart.

=> Meeting tons of other souls along the journey gives you a great possibility for having and meeting a soulmate.

=> If you make mistakes, even fatal ones, you get to learn from them and possibly redeem yourself in future lives.

Disadvantages:

~ You would have to suffer the pain of many deaths, and you would remember that pain. That’s not something I would want to live with, and keep reliving over and over.

~ You would have to keep growing up endlessly. Imagine having to keep going through puberty in each life. And how strange would it be to be a man in one life and a woman in the next. Don’t even get me started on if you believe you can be reincarnated as animals or objects.

~ While there would be consequences for your actions, you would be smart enough to know which ones would kill you, or you wouldn’t care, knowing you would have another life to live either just as sinfully, or to finally change your ways. This would definitely change you for the worst, and you would try to get away with everything.

~ What if you didn’t have your memories transfer over from life to life? You would never learn more than one lifetime’s worth of information, and fatal mistakes would never be able to be truly redeemed.

So, after all of that, I think I love the advantages so much more. Maybe I could believe in reincarnation at some point in the future, and I’m sure it will be even more attractive the older I get. But for now, I think I’ll stick with this life, and live it the best way I possibly can. I do believe in an afterlife, though, so maybe that’s how I’ll be reincarnated in the end… with wings.

Sam