Somedays, it’s hard to look around at all the endless piles of garbage called my life and say, “Yes, God is real.” But there are some instances that can’t be overlooked; when faced with so many close calls, one must say there is a God, and she is great.

I’m speaking of all the times I’ve faced death and lived, metaphorically and literally -- every time I did something stupid on the highway and I didn’t get in a wreck -- every time I got bullied and someone stood up for me (or better yet, I stood up for myself). Yes, I’m remembering the time I had to be admitted to a mental hospital because of suicidal thoughts. I pulled through. I conquered that. I’d like to thank God, who is a strong, bossy woman, who told me, “Honey, you’re not going to die. Today isn’t your day. You have plenty of time to piss people off and fuck around with your life and make people happy. Today isn’t your day.”

Here’s what I want to say. You will conquer it, whatever ‘it’ is. You wanna know why? Because God or god or Allah or Zeus or whatever deity you believe in is inside of you -- because there is love in you. There is something that is surreal, that is ineffable, that is intangible, and that is what God is.

I was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York a few weeks ago. My brother wanted to see the Hayden Planetarium. There are two shows I remember seeing. One was about the Big Bang theory. This BBC article on the Big Bang theory describes how the universe was formed:

Around 13.8 billion years ago, all the matter in the Universe emerged from a single, minute point, or singularity, in a violent burst. This expanded at an astonishingly high rate and temperature, doubling in size every 10-34 seconds, creating space as it rapidly inflated. Within a tiny fraction of a second gravity and all the other forces were formed. Energy changed into particles of matter and antimatter, which largely destroyed each other. But luckily for us, some matter survived. Protons and neutrons started to form within the first second; within minutes these protons and neutrons could fuse and form hydrogen and helium nuclei. After 300,000 years, nuclei could finally capture electrons to form atoms, filling the Universe with clouds of hydrogen and helium gas. Within this were tiny ripples of matter that were stretched to enormous sizes during inflation, and in turn, these became the seeds for the galaxies and galactic clusters we see today.

Depending on your views, you may see this as rubbish, but science doesn’t oppose God and vice versa. Who’s to say God isn’t the ‘singularity’ from which the universe emerged? Who is to say God isn’t the creator of the galaxies and the planets and the solar system?

The sad fact is that someday humanity as we know it will die out. It could be that resources will become scarce because of overpopulation, famine, war. It might be that the sun becomes hot enough that it starts boiling the ocean and our planet becomes unlivable. (I’m not making this up. This will actually happen in 1-2 billion years). We could be wiped out by a giant asteroid, like the premise of Ben Winters’ brilliant novel "The Last Policeman." I don’t know.

There is no good way for the world to end, and while I was envisioning this inevitable ending at the Hayden Planetarium, I was thinking, “If there is God, she will keep us living. She would not let us perish, her supposed greatest creations?” I’m sorry, I’m a drama queen. In that planetarium, I got this big sense of dread. More than that, I was Alice going down the rabbit hole. I thought, “There must be a heaven. It can’t end like this.”

But it can. Now, I am going to say something controversial: I don’t believe there is a heaven or hell. Look around you. This is the most beautiful it will ever get. There is a song that goes, “Heaven is a place on Earth.” That is to say, heaven is right here, and I believe that.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail,” said Stephen Hawking. “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

It’s true that people are afraid of the dark. When people think of death, they think of tragedy, of suffering, of the unknown. I think of a black hole that sucks and sucks all your energy out and all your matter disintegrates. Where does that matter go? Where do I go? Those are perfectly good questions. I know what happens to our bodies. We slowly dissolve into the world, peacefully, calmly, without life’s mess. We become food for plants, then become those plants, then become food for other beings, maybe even humans. It’s okay to be this way.

But, you say, “What happens to our minds, our soul?”

They don’t go to heaven, hell or any traditional afterlife. Religion is not for the dead, but maybe, they become part of our galaxy. Maybe, like Tristran and Yvaine in "Stardust," our souls shoot up into space and become stars. I think that’s a more fitting ending.

And if you don’t believe me, that’s fine. We are all entitled to our beliefs but do not use heaven as an excuse to not live your life to the fullest. Every minute counts. Let your cup overflow. Snatch up all forms of happiness and do not fear death. Be the best you can be. Not because God is watching, but because you owe it to yourself. God is good, strong and wondrous, and so you must be.

JK Rowling said:

“Do not pity the dead, Harry, pity the living, and most of all, those who live without love.”
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

Listen to JK.