Culminating Project

For this culminating project, I decided to speak with people my age to find out what they thought about death and the afterlife. I imagined that unless they had had to deal with death before, that they might be very confused about it. I was confused about what happens after a person dies until I experienced my mother’s death and was forced to really think through what I believed happened when a person died. I know that our religious beliefs have a big impact on how we think about death, and so do our fears. The idea of being gone forever is probably disturbing to many people and thus I wanted to see what some of my friends thought about it.  

(UPLOADING PROBLEMS WITH VIDEO)

For each of the people I interviewed, there seems to be a hope of an afterlife. There is no certainty expressed but each of the people I interviewed seemed to want to believe that they could either be reincarnated or that they would go to someplace good after they died. In the opening “scene,” its clear that Emma is the most troubled by the conversation. She starts out by saying that she doesn’t like the topic because its depressing and then interjects throughout the conversation. When Callie began with saying that she didn’t believe anything happened after death, Emma seemed somewhat offended, and thought of it as depressing. Even though the others were willing to talk about it, its clear that the topic of death is disturbing. It may have also been that we were at a party, and they just wanted to have fun, but I think there’s an underlying display of discomfort that comes from speaking of death.

Its interesting that almost everybody that I interviewed said that they believed in reincarnation because this notion comes from Hinduism and I don’t think that any of my friends are Hindu or that they have religious beliefs that support this idea. I think the reason why reincarnation appeals to them is because they don’t want to see death as permanent and they’re hoping, somehow, that life might continue in a different form. None of them expressed this belief with certainty that might come from religion or some other doctrine. Undoubtedly, it is their fear of the unknown that leads them to hope that there will be reincarnation.