Comfort in Knowing

I spend my life among a people who take strength in the concept of knowing what will happen.  Not necessarily what is about to happen, but what will happen after death.  This life is somehow tolerable if we have hope all will be made right after.  I don't really wish to discuss whether there is a life after this one or not.  Only to muse on why it is so critical that we know exactly what lies beyond in order to be happy.

Many is the meeting I have sat through where people have expressed gratitude that they aren't like the other people who don't know what they know about the afterlife.  People become very preoccupied with death being the end.  Why would not having anything after this life matter so much?  We would cease feeling pain.  Why the preoccupation with needing our identity to continue forever? It's an interesting question.

It seems to me that if we continue, fine, but if not,  we likely will not be aware that we don't exist as a sentient being anymore.  Either way is not so bad in my mind.  Why all the insecurity?  Perhaps it is part of our biology to worry about death and the self.  A survival instinct? 

As Mormons we place an incredible amount of importance on living forever.   Our family's living forever,  Our entire family's right back to the first person.  It becomes a lot of people fairly quickly.  I often wonder about the scalability.  Anyway,  not here to question doctrine, only the preoccupation with permanence.  Why do so many religions worry so much about what happens after death, and how are the ones that don't worry so much about it different?

In some ways when a religion dictates what awaits you forever,  or even just in the next life,  they hold a certain power over you.  If a belief system places more emphasis on happiness now, I would guess it would be easier to verify if it is working for you as you would either be happy or not so much.  Leadership then becomes a lot like herding cats, if everyone can judge for themselves. 

If a person no longer fears death or a negative hereafter, there is a much reduced ability to control them.   Impermanence can be a very liberating feeling.  Even though acknowledgement of impermanence ties us all together, in another way it also frees us to be what we are and not what would be dictated to us.  It allows us to live in the now, to experience the present and not disappear into concerns for the future or regrets from the past.