Dear Jason:

My understanding is that a human is the only animal who knows of one’s death to come, sometime, somehow and surely. Therefore we humans are the only animals that while healthy and young-enough fear death. Because we fear death, and because we are able to think and to imagine, we invented a “solution”- eternal life.

Some imagine eternal life in their bodies as it is, that they will never die, the body never to deteriorate, but youth regained at the end of the world, and life forever it is (Jehovah Witnesses).

Others imagine that they will die but their sousl will live forever, in heaven or hell (Christianity) … or in a new body yet to be born, and that soul finally freed to live forever without a body to limit it (Buddhism).

The truth:

I don’t know.

All existing explanations (as the above mentioned) seem too convenient to me, too convenient to be considered true to reality.

* It is only to us, thinking humans, that death is perceived as a tragedy. In nature, it is business-as-usual. Couldn’t be a tragedy if it happens every day, everywhere, always has happened, no exceptions, can it?

When animals’ homes in nature are destroyed, without a thought ( of course) they re-build. Only humans believe in building and building … building into eternity.

“what is the meaning of all we build and live for… especially if everything just ends up knocked down”-

when you prove yourself a trustworthy person, not betraying a trust in you, especially a child’s, that is something as solid as can be. If you break a child’s trust and do not correct, a whole lot is knocked down, in that child and in many people the child will interact with lifetime.

anita