Death ... The final frontier.
Yeah that's right. I've got a little Trekkie in me. I'm not one of those obsessive weirdos that knows everything about the Star Trek saga, but I watched The Next Generation. I know who Jean-Luc Picard is.
But fortunately this article isn't going to be about Star Trek. That's definitely NOT one of my obsessions. No, this obsession centers on the one thing that terrified me as a child and now facinates me as an adult.
Death.
As a child the idea of death freaked me out so much I wouldn't go to sleep. I always thought that if I thought about death before I went to sleep, I'd never wake up. As if just thinking about it would summon the grim reaper.
The strange thing was though, that I don't think it was actual death that I feared. It was more the unknown. I wanted to know what happened after that. After death would you go immediately to heaven or hell ... {obviously this was during my church going days} ... or would you be left in 'stasis' waiting for whatever else comes after the grand finale that is death? And more over, would you be conscious of this state of nonexistence or would you have remember dying one moment and the next you're there wherever there is? Like you blinked.
Too in-depth for ya? Yeah me too. I am very aware that this is all just proof that I have been over analyzing everything since birth, but fortunately I have proof that I'm not the only one. Matrix anyone?
I think one of the problems that encouraged this fear was my 'Christian' upbringing. And perhaps the reason I'm an atheist now {yes I'm back to it. Agnostic just didn't fit right.} The fear that's instilled into a Christian from birth is something I can't accept. But that's not what this article is about either. The original draft of this had a very long dissertation on my 'religious' beliefs and what lead me to being an atheist. Something I'm sure none of you care about.
But as I was saying, my Christian upbringing lead me to have such an obsession with death. The chronicles of Revelations in particular fascinated me and everything anyone ever had to say about Hell. I mean who didn't fear Hell? No one I know wants to end up there. And frankly I think that's the reason most people become Christians. They might have issues with the entire religion as a whole, and might have a few reservations about some of the things in the bible, but once they reach a certain age that fear of Hell overwhelms them and they decide to hedge their bets.
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