Everlastingness - Nov 15 2025

 

Everlastingness

Nov 15 2025

When I see my first ghost

will I rethink the afterlife?

And wish I didn’t have to?

That instead of death

as utter extinguishment

 — which, after all, happens every time I’m asleep

and seems like a reasonable way to end it all —

I will have to consider this limbo

of longing and confusion;

of attachment to a place

which has inexplicably changed

and where I’m unwelcome, unseen

unable to leave. 

Because they’re always tortured souls

who resent our presence

but struggle to act.

Who bring a cold chill,

never laugh or joke,

and repeat themselves

like re-enactors

trapped in some recurring nightmare.

Some business undone.

Some grudge

they need to expiate.

Some uncertainty

they’re even dead.

Or could we be the transients?

Who briefly inhabit this realm,

then join a burgeoning humanity

in the true reality

of the spirit world? 

Not mouldering in a grave.

Not reincarnation,

karmic or otherwise.

And not heaven or hell.

But instead

on some spectral plane

that occasionally intersects

with our 3 dimensional one.

What a cruel trick of posterity;

our lifelong wish

for everlastingness

granted after all.

Still eternity;

if not quite what we imagined

or hoped.

Have you ever seen a ghost? Know anyone who did? If so, were they the sort of sensible rational people you couldn’t dismiss out of hand?

I’d naturally be alarmed to see a ghost. But even more to imagine being one. They seem such tortured souls, trapped in a purgatory between life and death. Just imagine spending eternity there!