Adam Rasmussen: Life and Death

Throughout my experiences in life, I have encountered many different explanations for life and death. Raised by strict Christian parents, I wholeheartedly believed all the tenants of Christianity until I reached middle school. In middle school my views changed and I found myself pulling away from organized religion and Christianity. Through some of the most eye-opening experiences Ive ever had, I formulated my own belief system of the world, of how life works and the consequences of death. I find myself, much like Aristotle, bound by my logic. I have a hard time accepting something that I cannot justify logically, and once I deem something logical, I am very reluctant to relinquish that idea. My belief system is based on the perfection of circles. Through many observations, ive recognized that many things in this worldly realm of ours is centered on this idea of a circle or cycle. I guess you could say that I believe in a form of reincarnation. I choose to compare the life and death of our soul to be very much parallel to the same forces that act on our physical bodies. We gain sustenance from the soil, from a type of substrate which supports our life. When we die, our bodies decompose and return to the soil, to the substrate of which everything comes. I believe that our soul or life force or energy works in a similar way. I think that like matter, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change in its form. Like our bodies, our soul is basically a collection of energy at a particular time of which we can identify as our individual self. This energy is connected to everything and yet we can identify ourselves as being separate from everything. Once we die, I believe that our energy returns to the whole, the substrate of energy that we all come from. In a sense, I guess I believe in reincarnation, in the circle of life. Like the new phoenix that rises from the ashes, our individuality is just a parenthesis in the eternity of time.