The five people you'll meet in heaven

I personally don’t believe in a Judeo-Christian version of the afterlife. So no, no heaven for me. I also don’t believe in reincarnation or purgatory or the bardo, or anything like that. I believe in ghosts and have tried to meet many, but I failed.

However, this book really stood out to me for quite a few reasons. It is about a man who has spent almost all his life (infancy, childhood, teenage years, youth, and most of his adult life, except some time in the army, and doing a different job) in the same place. This happens to be a stationery pier found in New England. He has worked as a maintenance man at this pier and the book starts with his death. He then does go to a Judeo-Christian heaven. Though heaven is a place with layers and in these layers, there are different people. Each of the layers he meets a person who changed his life, or he changed theirs. So, yes, he meets five different people whose life he has impacted in some ways.

The reason that this book stayed with me for a long time is that the people he meets in heaven are not in a conventional way. Three of them are strangers- two of whom he has accidentally hurt, and one who he never knew even existed. One of them is an interpersonal relation that most people have in their lives, and another is also someone he knew, but didn’t understand the importance of that person. He also feels that his life, being someone who was obligated to work at the pier was wasted.

This stuck me in a few ways. Firstly, it brings the concept of the butterfly effect. I’m sure that there are people who I may have hurt or helped without they ever knowing I existed. There may be people I have gotten killed or one whose lives I revolutionized. I think of all the different homeless people I gave money to, or the people I killed on MMORPG’s. Who knows what impact this had on their lives? Similarly, there might be someone who I never met, especially in the internet age who I may have completely impacted on their life, but neither in a positive or negative way. (This book was published in 2003, and while I was online back then, not as many people were).

Another way that it stuck with me is that I have what some people would say “unconventional interpersonal relations”. I don’t have a significant other, in laws or children(step/bio/adopted etc), co-workers in the traditional sense and most of my interpersonal relations are on MMORPG’s. But I’m in a clan in a MMORPG and I love all the members of the clan immensely and they love me. I have many friends on MMORPG’s. too and a few on other areas of the internet and some completely offline. Across my life I have had formal servants, prank victims, teachers I hurt as a kid, extended family members (in my family we are still in touch with my third and fourth cousins often), rivals etc. I also have intense interpersonal relations with plants, objects, and animals.

In this book, it is not his siblings or parents or his best friends that show up in the main character’s five layers. This gives me hope that my interpersonal relations are valid, as many people have said things like “Internet friends don’t count” and “Marriage is based on romance” and so on.

But this is the most important reasons why this book will stay with me- I have by age 26, met five people who shaped my life. There are not family (except one) or clan members or friends or even strangers. But I knew when I met the last person that I had to re-read this book. This also reminded me of the last scene in the Big Bang Theory where although Sheldon Cooper notes that his family was great, he realizes his friends made him and asks them to stand. If I ever win any award, I’d like these five to all to be there too and like them to stand.

They are all different. And they aren’t even clan members or family members (except one) or friends.

I’m going to list them in order of importance (and thus the level of heaven at which I’ll meet hem) without giving away their identities.

5.My fairy godfather- He is relatively wealthy and assist me financially. I met him via a competition.

4.My adopted grandfather – He showed that you can get adopted at any age , even your seventies. I met him in a care facility.

3. My good luck charm- A pioneer and child prodigy. She can easily be like a Greta Thunberg but she uses her intelligence to change my life! I met her at a failed attempt at appearing on a game show.

2. My guardian angel – He defied many orders to turn my life around and out his job at risk to help me, when I met him on a mental health helpline.

1. I swear this one isn’t human- genuinely possibly an alien or a paranormal entity! Her life is a series of insane and eccentric adventures. We aren’t on speaking terms though.

So if there is an afterlife, I hope these people will meet me there.

I really hope so.

There is also a major problem. All six of us have very different views on the afterlife and they conflict. These people have also very rarely interacted with each other. Two of the five believe in the Christian afterlife though and one in the Islamic. Maybe there could be exchange programmes between different afterlives.

Or I might be wrong. It may me my parents or grandparents or strangers!