The same thing that happens before you're born--nothing.

My sister is convinced that reincarnation is a thing, but my parents aren't sure what they believe. My dad believes that, since energy cannot be created or destroyed--just converted into other forms of energy, he believes that something must happen to our consciousness when we die, but he doesn't know what.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the very end. You don't see anything--not even black. You don't even see. You're dead. Gone.

It's a comforting thought.

Anyone who says they know what happens after death is lying to themselves.

I never liked the notion of a central "god" overwatching everything. I prefer the notion that the universe is such a complex design both on the scale of the massive and the small, that when looked at from smallest to largest through it's mirrored systems, that the entire thing in itself is a collective consciousness.

It doesn't pick or choose. No more than we can talk to our cells on a one to one conversation. It just is. Like me or you. Except that we're part of the immense clockwork that makes it. We're infinitely tiny in the grand scheme of it all. But so are the cells that make individual people.

And, arguably, those infinitely small cells are the most important part of what allows people to even exist and function on a larger scale. However, that's my happy ending. My happy idea, if you will. When I die, I merely just join the larger collective on another scale.

But the simple truth I should understand is something I should remember.

I don't know what's on the other side. And I think it's both stupid and incredibly, humanly arrogant to think that our minds even have a chance of having existence or non-existence figured out when our perspective is so limited to the both complex, yet simple systems of our bodies.

Our expectations and the facts of reality are two different things. I have my happy theory, but what it truly comes down to for me is this. If there's another side, or if there's not, I'll find out for myself when or if I get there.