A friend died recently. Not a good death. If you heard the circumstances and you believed in reincarnation, you might conclude that the man might need to come back and finish on a higher note.

I can’t judge that. I don’t have enough information to know whether people whose lives end in suicide or alcoholism need to come back. I don’t know if we reincarnate. But what if…

What if there’s an incompletion at the tail end of certain lives; an incompletion based on the way those lives were lived, on how they ended? The rest of us think we may have escaped that re-embodiment. We may believe we’ve lived better lives. Or we may think we’re entitled to rebirth onto a higher plane. Maybe, we believe, we’ll attain nirvana. Or heaven if you like. As for those who haven’t lived such great lives, they’ll have to come back for a do-over.

Well, here’s another ‘what if.’ As I contemplated the sad death of my friend, I thought: What if we’re all joined, at the hip so to speak? Then, we each have to come back until the last one of us leaves the station. We’re all here walking each other home. So, until the last of us attains enlightenment, if you want to call it that, not one of us is truly enlightened. Because enlightenment is the realization that all are entitled to enlightenment.

There’s room enough in heaven for all of us. If it was too small for even one of us, it wouldn’t be big enough to be heaven. When one person tries to fit through its door, it’s too small. Yet when we all walk through together, the door is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Until the last of us feels worthy to pass through its gate, the rest of us won’t fit through.  If even one stands outside its gate, we all stand outside. We are each so insignificant compared to the whole, yet we’re all also each, in our own, small way, essential for its completion.

Hell is often regarded as a prison. Some people believe that some people will go to hell. We even tell them that when they cut us off in traffic. The problem with prisons is that if you keep someone inside, then someone else has to guard them so they don’t escape. That means the guards are as much prisoners as the inmates.

Since we all have different criteria of who belongs in hell, sooner or later, just about everyone is on somebody’s list. This means, not only that everyone deserves to go to hell, but that everyone is also standing outside its gates making sure those who deserve to be there stay there. It also means heaven will be a pretty lonely place, since in the end, according to someone’s criteria, you probably don’t belong. You’ll get to heaven, and heaven will be empty. Hell, on the other hand, will be full. So, whether you believe in reincarnation or in hell, thew news isn’t very good. You’ll either have to come back over and over again like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except it’ll be Groundhog Lifetime. Or you’ll go to hell.

Hell has been described as a place each of us occupies alone. Since heaven’s empty, if you got there, it’ll really seem like hell. Hell, on the other hand, is a prison that’s overcapacity. But I have an idea to change all that. Instead of moving everyone up to heaven, all we need to do is to forgive everyone down there, take the sign down above the gate that says ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE, and change HOPE to HELL.

Because we were all born once, nobody has to reborn ever again.

© 2025 by Michael C. Just