— Tales from the Universe
I have a theory about what happens after we die.
It is probably wrong.
But I like it.
I think that after the body stops working, after the last breath has left and the great machinery of being alive has finally gone quiet, there is a river.
Not a scary river.
Not a judgmental river.
Just a river.
It runs through somewhere that doesn’t really have a name.
And when you arrive, someone weighs your heart.
I’m not entirely sure what the scale is measuring.
Maybe kindness.
Maybe courage.
Maybe how honestly you lived.
Maybe all the things you did when nobody was watching.
Maybe the universe has a much better definition of “heart” than we do.
Perhaps the scale doesn’t even measure good and bad.
Perhaps it measures something stranger.
How much of yourself did you actually become?
I don’t know.
The universe has never given me the paperwork.
But eventually the weighing is finished.
And then comes the interesting part.
You get a choice.
There are two doors.
One says:
REST.
The other says:
AGAIN.
The first one is exactly what it sounds like.
No mission.
No lesson.
No personal growth challenge.
No productivity.
No morning routine.
Just rest.
You can stay as long as you want.
Perhaps eternity is mostly people finally getting some sleep.
Honestly, I wouldn’t blame them.
But if you choose AGAIN, you walk down to the river.
And this is where things get interesting.
The river isn’t really a river.
Not entirely.
It’s more like a river crossed with the world’s strangest player-select screen.
Lives are moving through it.
Thousands.
Millions.
Billions.
Some are already being lived.
Some haven’t started yet.
Some are ending.
Some are just beginning.
You can see them.
Not as biographies.
Not as little movies with spoilers.
More like glimpses.
A child laughing in a kitchen.
A woman standing beneath a mountain.
A man sitting alone on a train.
Someone falling in love.
Someone losing someone.
A family eating dinner.
A musician playing to twelve people in a bar.
A farmer watching the rain.
A scientist seeing something nobody has ever seen before.
A little girl finding a beetle in the grass and deciding it is her new best friend.
A thousand ordinary moments.
A thousand impossible possibilities.
The river carries them all.
And you get to look.
You might see a life that looks wonderful.
Beautiful family.
Good health.
Interesting work.
Warm home.
Excellent food.
You think:
Oh, that one.
Then you look a little closer.
Difficulty: High.
You reconsider.
Maybe another.
There’s one with adventure.
One with enormous love.
One with very little money.
One with a great deal of money.
One where you become famous.
One where almost nobody knows your name.
One where you live for ninety years.
One where you only get thirty.
One where you change the world.
One where you change exactly three people’s lives and never realize it.
One where you spend your whole life searching for something.
One where you spend your whole life believing you already found it.
The river keeps flowing.
And perhaps you can ask questions.
“What happens if I choose that one?”
Maybe the universe answers.
“You will find out.”
“Can I see the ending?”
“No.”
“Can I see whether I’m happy?”
“No.”
“Can I see whether I succeed?”
“What would be the point?”
Fair enough.
So you watch.
And eventually you see something that catches your attention.
Maybe it’s a person.
Maybe a place.
Maybe a strange little moment that doesn’t seem important at all.
You don’t know why.
You just feel something.
That one.
And then you jump.
Not gracefully.
There is no ceremonial descent.
No trumpet.
No glowing staircase.
You simply leap into the river.
And the river takes you.
Everything becomes very bright.
Then very dark.
Then very small.
Then—
you’re born.
There is, however, one rule.
Only one.
It is the most important rule.
Rule 1: You will not remember this part.
You will not remember choosing.
You will not remember the river.
You will not remember watching the lives.
You will not remember the heart being weighed.
You will not remember saying:
“Yes. I’ll take that one.”
Nothing.
Blank slate.
This seems unfair at first.
If I chose this life, I’d like to know what I was thinking.
I’d like to have the receipt.
I’d like to be able to complain to management.
“Excuse me. I appear to have selected the difficult family package by mistake.”
But perhaps forgetting is the entire point.
Because if you remembered choosing, you wouldn’t really be living the life.
You’d be performing it.
You’d be looking at every terrible day and thinking:
I chose this.
You’d look at every beautiful day and think:
This is the part I picked.
You’d never experience the mystery of it.
And maybe life is supposed to be mysterious.
Imagine playing a game where you knew every event before it happened.
You knew who you’d meet.
You knew who you’d lose.
You knew which decisions would work.
You knew which ones wouldn’t.
You knew exactly how long you had.
Would you still feel the same wonder?
Probably not.
The unknown is part of the experience.
So perhaps forgetting isn’t a punishment.
Perhaps it is the loading screen.
The universe closes the character-select menu.
The screen goes black.
And then:
New Game.
Maybe that’s why some people feel strangely drawn toward certain things.
A place they’ve never been feels familiar.
A person they’ve never met feels important.
A song they’ve never heard feels like remembering something.
A particular kind of life calls to them without explanation.
Maybe that’s nothing.
Probably.
Brains are strange machines.
But I like leaving a little room for mystery.
Maybe the river leaves fingerprints.
Not memories.
Just preferences.
Little echoes.
A pull toward something.
A feeling that says:
Keep going.
And maybe this is where the idea gets even stranger.
What if everyone around you is doing the same thing?
What if the difficult person you can’t understand chose a life too?
What if the stranger on the bus chose one?
What if your parents did?
What if your children did?
What if everyone you love—and everyone you don’t understand—is somewhere in that enormous river of lives?
Some choosing.
Some resting.
Some just beginning.
Some finishing.
All of us temporarily forgetting the larger picture.
That would make the world a very strange place.
A river full of amnesiacs.
Maybe that’s what makes kindness so important.
You don’t know what someone chose.
You don’t know what they’re carrying.
You don’t know what they saw from the river before they jumped.
You don’t know whether this is their first time around.
You don’t know whether they’re exhausted from a hundred lives or completely new to the whole strange business.
You don’t know.
Neither do they.
That’s Rule 1.
So we meet each other here.
On the riverbank.
In the dark.
Trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing.
And every once in a while, someone recognizes something in someone else.
A kindness.
A laugh.
A look.
A moment of understanding.
Something that feels oddly familiar.
We call it coincidence.
Maybe it is.
Maybe it’s something else.
And eventually, after this life is finished, perhaps we find the river again.
Perhaps someone weighs our hearts.
Perhaps we look back at the life we lived.
Perhaps we understand things we couldn’t understand while we were inside it.
Perhaps we laugh.
Perhaps we cry.
Perhaps we finally see all the little connections.
Every person we helped.
Every person who helped us.
Every life we brushed against.
Every tiny piece of ourselves that traveled onward into somebody else.
And then someone asks:
“Again?”
And maybe sometimes the answer is:
“No. I’d like to rest.”
And that’s okay.
Rest is not failure.
The river will still be there.
But maybe sometimes you look down at the flowing lives.
You see the impossible variety of them.
The strange little worlds.
The people waiting to be met.
The sunsets you haven’t seen.
The jokes you haven’t heard.
The meals you haven’t tasted.
The heartbreaks you haven’t survived.
The loves you haven’t discovered.
The ridiculous things you haven’t laughed at yet.
And somewhere in that endless river, something catches your eye.
You don’t know why.
You just know.
That one.
So you smile.
You take a breath.
And you jump.
Then the universe does its oldest trick.
It makes you forget.
And somewhere, in some impossible little room, the character-selection screen disappears.
The loading screen begins.
And you open your eyes.
You are here.
Again.
You have no idea why.
You have no idea what you chose.
You have no idea what comes next.
Which is probably exactly how it is supposed to be.
After all—
Rule 1.
You will not remember this part.
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