Flash Essay:
Do Buddhists believe in reincarnation? They do, right? In my almost Buddhist college years, I never got around to studying thoughts on the afterlife. To be honest, I don’t spend that much time thinking about Christian thoughts on the afterlife. That might be a hot take because most people believe Christians are obsessed with the afterlife. And maybe some are, but I think we’ve got enough to do right now that the afterlife will take care of itself. Nevertheless, this morning, the subject of the afterlife came upon me unexpectedly.
I was trying to do a 20-minute yoga workout on the Peloton app when I stopped after ten minutes. My legs were shaking, and my left knee was sore. Always the left knee. My stomach started to feel sick – likely because it was empty, save for the few sips of coffee I had before starting the workout. When I stopped the video, a box popped up on the screen with the prompt: “Tell us why you left the class. Give feedback. I suppose they wanted to know if it was something they did. No Peloton, it’s me, not you.
I moved from my tired, saddened sitting position onto my back and wondered why this was so hard? Why was it so hard just to do twenty minutes of stretching? This wasn’t hard twenty years ago, or even ten. Why has my body turned its back on me now when I need it the most? Increasingly, my joints set off a litany of snaps, crackles and pops every time I move from lying to sitting or sitting to standing. I want to turn things around, but my body won’t even allow me twenty minutes to try.
With the brow of my forehead scrunched, I told myself to relax my face, but I couldn’t. I was upset with myself, my age, my tight joints, my reality that time moves so fast and I can barely keep up. I’m already two months into being 44 and trying to understand how that happened.
You know how you’re about to cry, and there’s a second where you could fight it or just let the bough break? It was in that split second that the thought of reincarnation came into my mind. What if reincarnation is real? If our souls get multiple attempts at bat, then it wouldn’t be so bad spending one lifetime just trying, knowing there are other lifetimes to get things right. Trying and not succeeding wouldn’t feel like such a letdown if life represented multiple opportunities to apply lessons from a lifetime before.
I don’t know what Jesus would say about that, but it’s a nice idea.