Heaven is Love

And hell is unrequited love.

For the purposes of this article I want to define love as platonic love for friends, family, places, ideas and groups of people.

I'm trying to for the present take out the sexual aspects of unrequited love so I can speak easier about this without dredging up to many of your memories or mine about the unrequited loves of our life.

I was reading about Ketut in Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love". Ketut is a Balinese medicine man that she went to and learned from and helped teach English to in Ubud on Bali.

He said something like, "Heaven and hell same same." and she said something like "Well what is the difference?" He said something like, "Heaven happy love and hell unhappy love. So you might as well be happy!"

I think looking at life this way is very helpful.

In the course of all our lives we love many places and people:our parents, our extended families, our friends. And as they begin to die a piece of us dies with each one of them. What dies is the special relationship we had with them, what we talked about, what we shared. So an irreplaceable piece of us goes with each person we care about. It happens when we graduate High School or college or break up with a lover or friend and never see them again or even worse see them every day but can't be with them or talk to them.

So, it appears to me that whether we live in heaven or hell is a choice. It is a choice we make every day on earth and in the hereafter. Do we choose to live in some kind of heaven or do we choose hell? This is a choice we make every day. Remember choosing not to choose is also a choice and also leads nowhere. Sometimes, getting angry and moving on is also a choice that comes up from our deepest instincts. Some of the best long term relationships and things that have happened in my life came after getting angry and moving on. Whether that meant quitting a job and moving to another place or area. Or whether that meant throwing out an old orange carpet in the snow and my wife buying a beautiful new white one at a garage sale the next day for $25.

Each day we choose our heavens and our hells. And sometimes in the short run choices we make might be heaven but those kind often are long term hells. And as we grow older and hopefully wiser we get better at choosing better heavens to live in.

And maybe the oldest happiest people are still going here on earth are still going because they know how to choose the best heavens in their lives. So remember, choose your heavens carefully, whether it be on earth or after.