Heaven is something that fascinates me. Belief, in general, and the ideas we latch onto as a society are topics that appeal to me a great deal. None more so than Heaven, the promised land, the idea that somewhere, all the evil that was done against you will somehow be avenged. That you'll one day, once more, wash up clean.

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It baffles me, and perhaps I misunderstand it. Perhaps I'm missing the point, yet I can't buy into this pearly gates scenario where everything will be shiny and lovely, and I'll be happy and carefree. For one thing, it's very reductive. It's one-dimensional in many cultures, and it is not how I choose to define my nirvana.

Years ago, I reached the conclusion that we make our own hell on earth. I decided then that fear of God's judgment is redundant. There is nothing I can imagine worse than the damnation I can condemn myself to. No worse hell than the one I can, in my recrimination and guilt, put myself through. I'm sure I wrote about it here when I did, but it was, as I say, a long time ago.

It seems an idea easier to accept than that we can craft our own heaven. "A hell of his own devising" is, after all, quite a popular motif in literature and TV. We say of people that they were living in hell. It's overall acceptable to us that man can create his own hell, whether for himself or for others (often, we're quite good at both).

Less so, heaven. Why? Are we incapable of making our own Heaven? I don't think so. I choose to believe humanity has great potential for good. It's an active choice, and an effort, at times, in the face of evil, but it is mine. We *can*, as David Bowie once put it, be heroes. We can bring beauty into our world, and craft a life that offers us peace, and perhaps even absolution.

## Better luck next time?


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It seems to me that this expectation of Heaven being this "promised land" where all your suffering will be justified is misleading. For one thing, it teaches you it's okay to suffer. I know people that think that's the point of this life, to suffer, to go through pain and abnegation, all in the interest of some higher entity's pat on the back. I've heard people I love tell me that's what they're meant to do in this life. Suffer, in the interest of the next one

It seems unbearably sad. Largely because if there is an entity out there that wants us to actively suffer, then we're fucked.

The idea also bugs me on a psychological level because it's lax. Why should I strive in this life? Why, if something is making me miserable, try to change it? It's alright to fuck up this life, since there's a next one lined up, where Imma go to heaven.

Believe what you will, but saying that is kinda like saying you can afford the double cheeseburger 'cause you'll start your diet on Monday. Promise of future good or evil is no excuse to treat yourself poorly in the future. To stay in difficult, unpleasant relationships. To endure where you'd be better advised to speak out. To suffer in silence, instead of facing the shame.

I don't understand Heaven because it proposes something I've no patience for. Suffer today, so I can go to Heaven tomorrow? I'd rather stake my bets on a god who doesn't want his children to suffer, and doesn't make shame and abnegation prerequisites for eternal salvation.

## Heaven from what you've got?

There's a Romanian saying that goes something like that. Make Heaven of what you have. I don't believe that 100% either, in that I don't think you should settle, when there's a possibility for more. But it is marginally closer to my own beliefs, namely that you can craft your own heaven right here, right now, and not have it involve pain or meekness of any kind.

**But I think that scares people.**

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So much of our lives revolves around running away from ownership. We're scared to take credit for anything that goes bad in our lives to the point where we've created a sick, demented society where it's everyone's fault, but our own. Everyone's toxic, everyone's out to get us, everyone's a psycho and a narcissist, and we all need therapy.

That last may be true, but therapy's little use as long as you're unwilling to admit you're the guy in charge. You're the one condemning yourself to hell. You're the one who can build heaven, someday. Today, maybe. Before it's too late.

I'm not opposed to the idea of heaven, but I do believe it becomes a dumping ground for all the things that frustrate us. 

Shit job that doesn't enable your passions and interests? It's alright, because you'll go to Heaven, while the hedonists, and the risk-takers, and most of all, the uber-rich kids (whom you know you must hate) are going down under.

That's evading your responsibilities, man. You've got a responsibility to create the life you want, the heaven you'd dream of, which isn't gonna be lyre lessons and sitting around on clouds. Instead, it could be *real*. It could be 10x better.

If I come across as riled up, it's because this subject is a little too close to home right now, so thinking about this generic, faraway notion of the promised land tends to get under my skin. 

In the trilogy I'm working on, there's a lot of focus on deity, as the story progresses, with man's relationships with deity. I have one people who choose their own gods to follow, of the men and women they cross on this earth. In a short story I wrote the other day, again, I see the imagery of god, except in that one, it's a malignant, evil god who hurts with the same hand with which he caresses. It's something I keep returning to a lot, and it seems to have cropped up in my writing. Now, even here.

The point is, I don't think you need to give up on God. Believe or not, that's an irrelevant argument to me. I just don't think you should use it as  an excuse to live this present life in disservice of yourself.

## How do you view Heaven? How do you view Hell? And how do you define yourself in relationship with either?


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