This will be a short post…because there is so much emotion involved right now when I speak about the earthquake that occurred in Haiti on January 12, 2010.

I have many friends and family that live in Haiti, and there were a few days of trepidation while we waited for news about our loved ones.  Thankfully, they were all safe, but 150,000 of their neighbors and fellow Haitians did not survive the 7.0 earthquake.

And those of us who are distant from the cleanup and have no contact with the souls that still suffer in Haiti–we sit with idle hands and wonder…why?

Despite Pat Robertson’s absolutely inhumane remark that Haitians “made a pact with the devil” in order to be freed from French rule, these devastating tragedies occur in order to bring attention to an issue that has been overlooked for decades.  With its corrupt government (check out pictures of the President’s home before the quake), lack of aid from other nations due to its inability to provide any useful resources in return, and deforestation that precludes much farming by the natives, Haiti has had a really bad rap for far too long.

Now I could never justify the multitude of deaths that occurred, and I cannot imagine how horrible the mourning survivors must feel, but perhaps God can.  If, in his grand design, these souls had given up the remainder of their lives in order to bring Haiti’s plight to the world, then they were truly angels on earth.

Suicide is ending one’s own life. Simple definition, but not a simple decision, I’m sure. If you’ve never read my main blog, KimberlyDarwin.com, I address living a guilt-free life despite all the guilt we throw at ourselves and others.  But here, I want to discuss suicide from the perspective of reincarnation.

One of the main tenets of most religions that support a belief in reincarnation is that we come to our physical bodies in order to learn lessons, which will improve the integrity of our souls.  With this in mind, what happens to one who has ended his own life?  After all, suicide is performed as an escape from life’s difficulties (terminal illnesses aside–that’s for another post).  So during life’s lessons, the mind inside a body feels disconnected from others, from the Universe, and feels that ending this existence is the only way to end that loneliness.  According to the Youth Suicide Prevention Website:

“[Youths]  tend to believe that all of the unhappiness they are feeling and experiencing will go on forever. Everything that is happening to them is in the ‘here and now’ and they can’t begin to think that there might be a brighter future just around the corner.”

Although this was written for teens, I believe that it applies to adults too.  And where the youthful mind may not be as self-aware as most adults, the emotions are the same.  Failed relationships, parental issues, social struggles, peer pressure.  Issues that nearly every adult experiences in life, however the perspective for those who consider suicide is of course shifted.

So how does this affect the next life?  Well, if we continue with our thought process from earlier, we are here to learn lessons.  And if we don’t learn them in this life because we chose to escape them, then what do you think we will face in the next life?  The same lessons once more, I fear.

Tonight I watched a documentary on Stephen Hawking, whose brilliant mind has unraveled many possible theories about why we are here.  A visual description was presented that explained the vastness of our universe.  A Cambridge professor stood in the University’s library, which was enormous in its own right.  He likened the library to our universe, and drilled down to our little galaxy, which was represented by the period in one of books on one of the shelves.

Now from our standpoint, our galaxy is enormous, seemingly boundless.  Yet if this metaphor was close to correct, we are simply specks of dust in this giant conglomeration of rocks and space that is our universe.

With this comes the question of reincarnation.  It would be narcissistic for us to believe that we are the only living beings in the Universe–the odds are completely against it, even considering the different atmospheres and living conditions necessary to sustain life on other planets.  Yet there are simply too many heavenly bodies in our universe to surmise that only one of them exhibits these perfect living conditions.  More likely, there are billions that do; and if we have found traces of water on even the planet NEXT to us, consider the possibilities further away.  And if we reincarnate, could we decide to where we return?  Could we reincarnate to life on a planet 2.5 million light years away in the Andromeda galaxy?  And if so, would we experience a completely different set of life lessons due to the technology that exists there or the alternative challenges that face its population?

I would like to think that living in another galaxy would afford us even more opportunities to discover Who We Really Are.

I just finished reading The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel by Garth Stein.  Great book to open the discussion of the purpose of animals in our world.  In the book, Enzo is a dog who has reached his last animal incarnation, and his next life will be that of a human.  The book is sweet, if somewhat predictable, but its main premise is that animals are of a lower intellectual caste than humans.  Yet Enzo thinks as a human does, with an awareness of his emotions, right and wrong, and the relationships between those he observes.  Do our animals do this, or do we simply assume that they react merely out of instinct and external stimuli?

Interesting thought.  Comments?

My beliefs are more than guesses in the dark as to the reason for the existence of humanity.  To me, it’s knowledge pure and simple.  For beliefs still have an element of doubt, and I have none of that about why we are here.