Lampfall
Family friend passed away in her sleep today. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her, and she just...had a heart attack and died. I can't imagine just...dying. Like I'm going to go to bed tonight, and then you'll never hear from me ag...no. Morbid. Stop. That's just slightly scary.
It led on to a whole discussion with my dad about whether there is an afterlife and a human soul. He seemed rather aghast at the fact that I don't "believe" in an afterlife. My justification for this is that I believe people who go through life believing that their current situation sucks, and there are Better Things coming up Ahead (i.e. after we die), are going to spend this lifetime...I don't know, with stunted potential. Because if you believe that after you die (if you've been Good) you are either a) rewarded by heaven, if you're Christian or Muslim, or b) on a progressive cycle towards the ultimate state of Nirvana, if you're Buddhist....well surely what you're saying that this lifetime isn't as good as it gets...?
I don't think that going through life thinking that we can't be as good as we get in this lifetime, right now, with what we have...that can't be right. I don't know. Personal opinion. *hides from the scores of angry idleThinK religious theists*.
By the way, the title of this post is "Lampfall", because in literature class today, we were studying a poem called "Lampfall", which is quite ironically about death. Sometimes, life sends you little signs...
...but that's rubbish, because you only identify the signs after the event they were pointing to happened, so actually you're just back-forming the connection. But anyway. As you can see, I don't believe in psychics either.
[11:30PM update] More SARS deaths in China. You know, I just realized that if SARS doesn't let up by the end of this year, I won't be able to come home to Malaysia when term ends. I'll be stuck in the UK over the New Year's. I won't see my family for New Year's! Aaaaah. Oh well.