If you know me, you know that when I get into a show, I get into a show. It took me about a month to get through seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the first four seasons of Angel. And that’s with school, extracurriculars, and this website. Impressive, right? But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. No, I want to talk about Hell and being agnostic, and how that relates to a very interesting conversation Angel and the recently-non-corporeal Spike have at the beginning of Angel season five.
I’m not going to give you much context for this conversation because it’s not really important and you should really just watch the show (Buffy first, though), but here’s what you need to know: after saving the world and some surprising turns of events, the vampire Spike sort of comes back from the dead in non-corporeal form (meaning he can’t touch anything). Unfortunately, the mumbo jumbo that brought him back is faulty, so sometimes he disappears for a couple hours and descends, temporarily, into hell.
Though Angel (also a vampire) and Spike really don’t like each other, they have one very genuine conversation about the whole hell thing as Spike gets more and more afraid. Even though both vampires have souls now, they reigned terror on the world for hundreds of years, and both know where their stories end, even with their years of repentance.
Spike: “I’m getting close. To Hell.”
Angel: “Welcome to the club.”
Spike: “So why should we even bother to make good? What’s the point?”
Angel: “What else are we gonna do?”
And that’s what I want to talk about- the ““What else are we gonna do?” line, and how, as the blog title suggests, it relates to my afterlife.
I’ve made it no secret that I’m agnostic, both online and “IRL” (in real life). Though most of my friends are either nonreligious or pretty chill with the whole thing, I still get questions from more extremist-inclined people about my disbelief in an afterlife. They ask (for very different reasons) the same question Spike did… “So what’s the point?”
To a degree, I agree with Angel. What the hell else am I gonna do with my time? I’m a reasonable human being, and while being a giant, narcissistic, self-serving, evil asshole might be easier for a little while, I don’t need the threat of a bad afterlife to tell me that sort of behavior isn’t ok. More than that, though, seriously, what else would I do? My not believing in an afterlife, or as in Angel’s case a good afterlife, does not diminish the good I can do on this Earth while I still can. In fact, my disbelief makes my time on this Earth matter more, at least to me personally, because this is my one chance. My one chance to make as many people smile, laugh, and think as I can.
The point, Spike and curious religious people, is that regardless of how or why, I exist. And I will be damned (no pun intended) if I don’t do something good with that existence. I want to travel, see the world, write the world, write new worlds just because I can, meet people, fall in and out of love, and do my very best to make the people around me as happy as they have the capacity and the willingness to be. Because why not? If this life is all I believe that I have, and all that I believe other people will have, then I want to make this life the best it can possibly be for all of us. I don’t have a good enough excuse not to.
I’m not afraid to die. I am not afraid that someday, I might cease to exist. And you know why? Because it was worth it. To feel and to see and smell and laugh and cry and love and lose and be. I wouldn’t give that up for any afterlife you could offer me. I refuse to apologize for living, because life’s too short, and I don’t intend on wasting it.
