Tony,

I love your blog. I haven’t been a reader for long, but I always get a chuckle out of your advice. I try to be religious but I have my doubts sometimes (a lot of times). How do you stay so positive? What if there is no afterlife? What then? – Concerned

Gentle spirit,

I suppose there could very well be no afterlife, no champagne party on the other side of the Pearly Gates, no conga line being led by Hendrix and Cobain and Marilyn Monroe.

I suppose it could be that when we die we become worm food and that’s it.

To me, spirituality is something you feel in your gut, your heart, the part of you that’s not your mind. But you asked online so let me answer you online.

When I think about things like the human body, how our lungs take oxygen and mix it with our blood and turn the whole thing into energy and life and how our blood circulates and how the antibodies in our systems work and how our skin heals and how our liver filters impurities. And yes, I think about our stomachs and intestines and how they turn that apple i ate and eventually poop it out, I think these bodies we have are the most amazing creations all by themselves – not to mention our brains which can remember things and create things and solve problems. Nor do I mention Love and all of the things that surround that unique concept.

When I put it all together I find it extremely hard to think that we are given the miracle of life to only live on this baffling crust for a blink of an eye, relatively, and then thats it.

I think theres something more. I don’t think we are sand castles on the beach that only last a few hours and then go back to the sea. I do think there are all star pants off dance offs after we die with all of your favorite people in history with truly endless shrimp.

And most importantly, bread that doesn’t make you fat.

In the meantime I think it is our duty to rock as hard as we can down here so we have something interesting to tell our heroes when we finally meet them in the buffet line, but yes I do think we will get to meet them and i think there will be something interesting to do after that.

And I think it probably involves guitars

played loudly.