A few years ago Neil’s father – also a car mechanic – died, and Neil believed that his father still existed in some little-altered form somewhere beyond an invisible curtain. Derek took the opposite view. As far as he was concerned, death is the absolute end, and those who believe in ‘life after death’ (as popular perception likes to term it) are fools deluding themselves because they are too weak to accept that we are not immortal. He was more comfortable with the notion that life begins at birth, ends with death, and there is nothing else, because such a view makes life less complicated.
So both men believed what they wanted to believe, one as a reaction to grief and the other as a way of avoiding complication. And they were both quite certain that they were right. And such is the nature of conflict.
Some people turn to religion and believe what the priests tell them, while others turn to that brand of science totally immersed in material perception and believe what their favoured scientists tell them. And still they’re all sure that they’re right. And so it goes on.
Why don’t they just adopt a position whereby they believe in nothing but embrace the possibility that nothing is impossible? Then they wouldn’t claim to know anything and a better level of tolerance would have to prevail.
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