I think we've probably already safely established that I was an odd kid. I once wrote about how wonky my sleeping abilities were, but I left out one liiiiiiiitle detail. It was a recurring nightmare that only happened when I was awake. I'd think about before bed regularly, as there's no better time for a little girl to contemplate her existentialism than late at night when she should be sleeping.

I was raised a catholic, and could get down with the whole hanging out with Jesus afterlife plan.  It sounds like a great thing to do after you've exhausted this life. Dying (not that I want to do it anytime soon) didn't seem that bad, as it's just a door to another life. But I couldn't quite wrap my head around the whole eternity ordeal. Forever is a very, very long time. Sometimes, I'd envision it as my body being a little spaceship rushing around the stairs forever. Sometimes, a little horse on a carousel going around and around ceaselessly.

Any way I pictured it, my stomach was highly unsettled. None of them seemed like something I wanted to do. Even if eternity is a more perfect version of this world, I still couldn't handle the thought of forever. It's just so incomprehensible and unknown. To this day, forever still gives me anxiety when I contemplate it. So I just usually don't.

But sometimes, events happen that cause you to reevaluate what you believe. And this time, I think I've come up with a more agreeable version of eternity.

I still welcome the thought of rebirth into the afterlife after a long and happy stint here. But I don't think it's just the person's soul shooting up into this other world, it's getting passed back into this world, too. Much like that weird movie Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson, who randomly starts to utilize her entire brain. Once she reaches 100%, she combusts into everything around here. That's eternity.

When you die, your soul is deposited into the lives of everyone you touched. Souls are the energy for the living, and yours is fueling the growth of the other ones still on earth. And with that amount of interconnectivity, there's no way that piece of the soul that departed this world isn't feeling the loved shared between all the living souls that absorbed it. Love is the soul left behind, and there's no way that those who have passed are living in an eternity where they don't know how much they're missed. An eternity full of love doesn't sound too bad, especially when you got to leave a bit behind for the rest of us.