Sometimes I think if reincarnation is real, I hope it’s not the kind people say it is. Not the kind where you come back to heal karma or learn a lesson, because honestly, I don’t think I’ve learned anything, and I doubt I ever will.
Some say the soul passes through cycles until it reaches freedom, but the word “freedom” doesn’t sound as pleasing as it should right now. I picture it like finally clocking out after a long shift at a disappointing, low-paid job, except there’s no paycheck and no clock to punch out on.
Others say it’s like an endless wheel of birth and death, that your attachments keep you spinning. That’s probably supposed to sound poetic, but it just makes me anxious. Because what if I’m the one spinning myself? What if all this worrying is the so-called attachment, and I’m just looping endlessly because I don’t know what to do or how to stop?
There’s this scientist, Ian Stevenson, who studied children who claimed to remember past lives. Some of them remembered names, places, even birthmarks that matched dead strangers. It’s strange, beautiful, and horrifying all at once, because if it’s real, it means we don’t get to stop. We just keep taking new forms and call it a second chance, whether we’re ready or not.
Sometimes I wake up too early, and for a few seconds, I forget who I am. It’s just me and the quiet dark, the kind of silence that feels almost aware. And then my name comes back, my to-do list, the little reminders of being alive, and I catch that thought again — the one that whispers maybe I’ve done this before. This morning, this dread, this burnt toast of a life that somehow still insists on continuing.
If reincarnation is real, I hope next time I’m something small enough to forget, something that doesn’t have to keep relearning how to want or how to fail at existing. A moth, or moss, maybe, something gentle and quiet. Something that just exists.
And if it’s not too much to ask, I hope I’m treated more gently next time, by the world, by myself, by whatever is in charge of this looping mess.