Sunday, October 14, 2018

A Halloween Thought

All ghost stories are optimistic, not scary. They assume we continue after death, even if our afterlife ambitions always seem to be fixated on afflicting or terrorizing the living.

If you were a spirit, free from the need for food, water or bathroom facilities and all the time in eternity at your “fingertips”, wouldn't you think of better things to do, like world travel or catching up with other deceased acquaintances? Imagine chatting philosophy with Socrates and Samuel Clemens or exchanging poetic bon mots with Dorothy Parker? What do any of them think of Kanye West? Have any of them ever voted post mortem in American elections? That would be interesting to know. Maybe you’d organize with other ghouls to protest shoddy cemetery maintenance?

Halloween night frightening might be fun, but doing it 365 days a year for all eternity would bore me to death!