Ah, but we aren't allowed the luxury of finality. We dilute and hobble our most genuinely felt impulses with the idea, whether fervently held or naggingly suspected, that after death there is something else, and that that something may be endless, and that the correctness of our behavior in “this” life may determine how we fare in the “next” one (and for those poor souls who believe in reincarnation, the ones after that).

