Why I think most people are religious

Most of the time, I’m perfectly okay with steadfast atheism. Even if it means accepting that I'm the theological inverse of a religious fanatic. 

But sometimes, specifically when I’m taking an afternoon nap (because 24-almost-25 year-olds with full time jobs and the sleeping habits of a teenage boy STILL TAKE AFTERNOON NAPS) and I’m vacillating between cat-nap-type-twilight-sleep and bouncy-ball-thoughts-anxiety-ridden-wakefulness, that it hits me... And my body goes rigid, like I couldn't move if I wanted to, and my heart quickens to full-fledged tachycardia, because I'm telling myself that SOME day, perhaps TOday… I will die. Perhaps right now, probably right now, my heart will stop and I will cease to have thoughts. I will no longer think, and I will no longer have an opinion, about shit all.

AND THAT IS FUCKING SCARY.

And its that cold-despair-sinking-why-bother-living-anyway-if-this-is-true reasoning that leads me to think being religious must be so much easier than accepting bleak nothingness.

UNTIL, I remind myself, that I won’t know I’m dead, if I die tomorrow or even if I die right now... because I’ll fucking BE DEAD.

AND that technically I’ve already been dead, for a trillion years or so and I had no idea.

So what’s really different between already not having existed for an indeterminate amount of time while not being the slightest bit the fuck aware of it, and ceasing to be aware of the existence that I know? Why don't I feel the need to make up a lovely story of a holding place where I've existed for all preternity prior to making a fleeting appearance on earth before spending eternity in a holding place such as heaven or hell or purgatory or waiting for the goddamn light to turn green?

All I have is doubt and daunt. And impatience with people who fuck around telling me they KNOW when they die they'll go to heaven. "Stop being a fucking child" -Jim Jefferies. You don't know. You only know what people told you. And what people told you to read. Just like I don't know.

I don't think people really want a heaven, I think people want what I want. To not be afraid of death, and to see lost loved ones again.

The fact I even exist is a huge fucking accident. The fact that I exist in America in the 2000s is an even huger fucking accident, because all I really want out of life is to read books and sit in meadows at sunset and have as many thoughts as I can have before I cease to think, and to squeeze as much life into my lifetime as I possibly can. 

"There's a time in our lives
we start again on writing our part
as the story goes on it's the rule that we remember our lines

I know everyone would want me to say
that I'm not afraid to be alone

I'm gonna live I'm alright,
I'm gonna die it's alright, I'm okay" 

That's Some Dream by Good Old War