I read a lot about god (God) here, poetry brings out the worst in some people.
For more than twenty five years working with young people, I was asked all the classic questions, “Do you believe in ghosts?” “Is there a god?” But the question that rose above all the others, the one that revealed the deepest human anxiety was: “What happens when we die? Where do we go?”
Common sense begins where superstition ends. So let’s start with ghosts. The question is not whether I believe in them belief is irrelevant. The question is whether they exist. And they do not. That doesn’t forbid anyone from believing in them, humans have always filled the dark with stories but reality is not obliged to match our fears or our fantasies.
The same reasoning applies to god. Common sense suggests there is no divine overseer, no cosmic parent watching from above. Yet the human mind is a meaning making machine, and if someone finds comfort in imagining a god, that is they're right. Belief can soothe, even when it cannot explain.
But death, that is where common sense becomes both simplest and most profound. What happens when we die? We cease. Life ends. Being ends. Consciousness dissolves. There is no afterlife waiting like a second act. There is only the same nothingness from which we came.
When a thoughtful child asked me about death, I would ask: “Do you remember what it was like before you were born?” They always said no. And I would tell them: “That is what it will be like when you die.” Not frightening. Not painful. Not mysterious. Simply nothing, the end.
This is not bleak. It is clarity. It is the freedom that comes from recognising that our meaning must be made here, in this brief moment of existence, not deferred to an imagined eternity. Common sense does not diminish life it sharpens it.
Poetry by JohnJohn
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Written on 2026-06-13 at 06:28
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god or God ?
There is no god (God). What we have instead is the quiet, persistent discipline of common sense and the courage to use it. Common sense is not glamorous, but it is honest. It asks nothing of us except that we look at the world as it is, not as we wish it would be.For more than twenty five years working with young people, I was asked all the classic questions, “Do you believe in ghosts?” “Is there a god?” But the question that rose above all the others, the one that revealed the deepest human anxiety was: “What happens when we die? Where do we go?”
Common sense begins where superstition ends. So let’s start with ghosts. The question is not whether I believe in them belief is irrelevant. The question is whether they exist. And they do not. That doesn’t forbid anyone from believing in them, humans have always filled the dark with stories but reality is not obliged to match our fears or our fantasies.
The same reasoning applies to god. Common sense suggests there is no divine overseer, no cosmic parent watching from above. Yet the human mind is a meaning making machine, and if someone finds comfort in imagining a god, that is they're right. Belief can soothe, even when it cannot explain.
But death, that is where common sense becomes both simplest and most profound. What happens when we die? We cease. Life ends. Being ends. Consciousness dissolves. There is no afterlife waiting like a second act. There is only the same nothingness from which we came.
When a thoughtful child asked me about death, I would ask: “Do you remember what it was like before you were born?” They always said no. And I would tell them: “That is what it will be like when you die.” Not frightening. Not painful. Not mysterious. Simply nothing, the end.
This is not bleak. It is clarity. It is the freedom that comes from recognising that our meaning must be made here, in this brief moment of existence, not deferred to an imagined eternity. Common sense does not diminish life it sharpens it.
Poetry by JohnJohn
Read 17 times
Written on 2026-06-13 at 06:28
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
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