Unfettered Contempt - Chapter 1

When people speak of heaven, they always tend to describe it as some actual spatial realm, often composed of clouds, light, and winged angels, complete with their usual halo, wings, and harps. That's the way Sunday School teachers always taught, or at least implied, to the naive children who did not even have the faintest idea of what the remainder of their mortal life would be like, let alone of the unfathomable afterlife. Though I managed to pull off the good-kid image throughout my childhood, I was always skeptical of the whole aerospatial description of heaven. The whole concept of going somewhere after death was paradoxical in essence, since physicality no longer applies after leaving the mortal realm. I feel that if we prefer to describe heaven in tangible terms, we should accordingly seek for it among earthly experience. Of course, the whole idea behind heaven is that it is a hope beyond what this wretched world can offer; I merely dare to suggest that one can find such supernatural delight amongst the common. Beauty in simplicity, as one might put it. Indeed, poets and philosophers may find profound truths in a simple flower or a leaf. Yet I don't fiddle with the idea that I have come to such revelations when it comes to how I discovered my idea of heaven, the one that personally supercedes the usual aforementioned Sunday-School-description. It is neither sacred nor eloquent. It does not bear the profoundness and simplicity of the cherry blossoms that inspired the zen masters. Alas, my revelation of heaven is at best vulgar, but authentic nonetheless.