“Life can be beautiful,” James Dean as Jim Stark said in Rebel Without a Cause.

When it ends, what do you think will happen? Whatever it is, it probably doesn’t matter as much as we think it matters. I like to think of it sometimes, when I’m not busying myself with the business of being alive and the play of being well.

I like to think of what happens after we die as the same thing that happened before we were born, because I think time only exists on this plane. I think it is relative and barely exists as it is. I like to think of the afterlife as being a place where we all know everything that our higher selves know, but we have access to it because we are no longer bound by mortal flesh. I like to think a drug that our bodies release upon birth and death (DMT) is our portal assistant, getting our actual essence from one plane to another. I like to believe that small traces of the drug are responsible for our dreams. Like wisps in the wind reminding us of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

I’ve never done DMT, but the studies on it are fascinating. Most individuals experience the same thing for about 15 minutes. A sensation of pushing past a net to know what’s on the other side seems to be a common theme.

I like to think about waking up, after I die, and finding myself to be my higher self, and surrounded by everyone. All souls not otherwise engaged on a different plane all busily and excitedly moving about in the same place. Running into each other and suddenly realizing in one shocking moment that the soul you are staring at was your best friend two lives ago and you killed him that last time around. I’d find one of my closest friends from this current round and we’d laugh so hard and pat each other on the back and remember what our bodies started to look like when we had gotten old. I’d find people I’d married the last couple times around and we’d wink at each other, just knowing.

The bottom line for me is this: One way or another, we all go back into the same toy box in the end. It doesn’t really matter what I think, though, unless I apply it to my current life and how I live it. The older I get, the more likely it appears that Eminem was correct and we get one shot. What happens later happens, regardless of my thoughts. If I were you and you were I, I would look at the stars as much as possible and just enjoy being, if you can.