The Fields of Elysium

“Pass yon easy hill, and thence descend; The path conducts you to your journey’s end” Virgil

I arose the other morning, quickly shaved, made a stunning coffee, perched myself against the kitchen bench and, with blurry eyes, stared at the boundless horizon I’m lucky enough to be able to see from where I live. I sipped my excellent brew and found myself thinking of the people in my life I had loved and lost along the way. Perversely I wondered if they were ok. I wondered if they were happy and enjoying themselves over there.

I then thought, where exactly is ‘there’? You can’t point to it and can’t visit without becoming a permanent resident. No one has ever returned to tell us about the place but rumour has it that it’s so great, that once there, you never want to leave. It’s just heavenly!

Everyone’s right Judaism tells us that death is just the visible horizon of existence which can be seen from our vantage point at our current level of evolution, but that beyond the horizon lies much more. Nice.

The Ancient Greeks conceptualised the afterlife in The Fields of Elysium, with admission reserved for ‘the righteous’. Here they would persist, to live a happy existence, and rather oddly, indulge in whatever employment they had enjoyed in life.

Everyone seems to have their own opinion about the other-side and they all believe theirs is correct. It’s a comforting and seductive idea that not only is there more waiting for us, but that it’s better than life itself.

What dreams may come. It’s a lovely notion; death is not the end, it’s the beginning of something else; perhaps something better! One no longer need be worried about getting old, dying, losing a loved one, or any of the painful vagaries of life as our existence is just a small drop in an endless ocean of time

Except for one thing – what if it’s wrong? What if when we die we just stop? There is nothing more. We wink out of existence in a similar, though reversed way to when we winked in on our ‘zeroth’ birthday. After death our bodies are pulverised, recycled and ultimately used to construct other things, including other beautiful living creatures forever!

Is this notion any better or worse than Paradise and does it even matter? Perhaps it is Paradise. An eternal re experiencing of life in an infinity of ways, forever. From this perspective we can’t die, only transform. I could live with that.

The cosmic travel agent. I find the idea of transformation very comforting but it still appears to be a shameful waste of all the experiences we accumulate during our stay here. It’s like going on the most mind-boggling, ultimate holiday only to have customs seize all your photographs, souvenirs and all your baggage when you finally arrive home; and to make things worse, we don’t get to choose who we share the holiday with or where we start out. There isn’t even a guarantee how long we can stay.

All things considered, if a travel agent presented these options, most people would get up and walk out laughing; however, the fee for this mind-boggling, ultimate holiday is reasonable and we don’t need to pay for it until the very end of the adventure.

This might go towards explaining why 7 billion people have signed up so far – It’s widely considered a bargain.

The fire in which we burn. The special solidarity which we all share, which is that we all have a limited time in which to do whatever it is we’re going to do, is unifying. We feel it strongly when one of us dies. Regardless of who or what they were or how they lived or died, above all they were one of us and we are all lessened by their absence.

The best way we can honour them is by improving the World they left behind. At the very least we shouldn’t make it any worse. Another way is for us to live a meaningful life. The clock is running, how are you going to spend the next hour, day, week, year? Many of us spend our lives doing jobs we don’t enjoy, for people who don’t appreciate us, in exchange for money which is supposed to improve our lives but often doesn’t. Considering we spend half of our lives working, this behaviour doesn’t make sense. We are working just to live. We are trading our precious finite time away.

I know we all need money, it’s good and gives you choices; I’m just pointing out that it won’t necessarily make us fulfilled and that every dollar is exchanged for some of our time here. I assert that we should do a job we enjoy and that inspires us. Something that adds to our life and makes the time / money exchange worthwhile.

If you can’t find something you enjoy, try finding enjoyment in what you’re doing. After all, every day and every job has good things about it. Time is independent of our sex, race, wealth, fitness, basically everything; and as we can’t really fabricate any more of it, I put it to you that time is the most precious thing in the universe, and we therefore need to spend it wisely.

Living in the Fields of Elysium. Regardless of what happens after life, unfortunately we the living continue to miss those who did the dying. This is especially so if the person died unexpectedly. In this case there is no time to say goodbye, I love you, I forgive you, I’ll never forget you. They are gone and only memories and a thousand things unsaid remain to torment those ‘left behind’; heartbreaking.

Happily, I’ve found there is a simple solution to some of this suffering while simultaneously improving the quality of all our lives…

• We can be conscious we’re human beings, appreciate and take in everything around us.
• We can make a list of our most loved people and schedule quality time to spend with each one. We can tell them we love them and how grateful we are to have them in our life.
• We can relax into life and try to enjoy our ride while it lasts.

Doing this is great for our spirits, strengthens the bonds around us and lets us live a life with fewer regrets. It makes us more relaxed, happier and less stressed. It makes us feel connected with those around us and gives real meaning to our life and to others. Perhaps if everyone did this all over the World, we could live out our lives in the Fields of Elysium without having to die first in order to get there.