Last week, my seven-year-old son asked, “What is heaven?” I wasn’t ready to give a seven-year-old my map to atheism, so I asked him what he thought heaven was. He answered, “Where you go after you die to be with your family.” I’m 100 percent certain there is no God and believe that the notion of a superbeing is irrational. As I’ve matured, I also recognize that my explanation of the universe—there was nothing, and then it exploded—is no less irrational.
As a younger man, I was always grabbing, searching. More money, more praise, more relevance, bigger, cooler experiences. But similar to the vampires in an Anne Rice novel who can have sex but never climax, there was just never enough. Until I had kids, my life was “More … I want fucking more.” The only time I’ve ever felt sated, ever, is with my family.
My youngest has had trouble sleeping lately, so I meditate with him and go through a series of stretches and exercises to clear our minds. Sensing a strategy for delaying the hour-long process of going to sleep, he asks me, any night I’m home, to “clear his mind.” We go through the steps, and I finish by running my forefinger down his forehead, over his nose and lips, past his chin, and finishing on his Adam’s apple. He drifts into sleep, wakes up, discovers me next to him, rolls over, flopping his outer leg and arm on me, and returns to his slumber. In that moment, “this” all makes sense: I’m with my family, watching over them, strong, timeless, immortal. My child, assessing my worth on things that have nothing to do with our modern, material world, chooses me. I’m with family, loved, and at peace. I’m in heaven.
I don’t think we go to an afterworld, but I do believe we can get to heaven while still here on Earth. When I’m near the end, I want my boys and wife to lie next to me, clear my mind, run their forefingers across my forehead, and strap their arms and legs on me. This is it for me … I don’t need anything else. I will make it to heaven, just a bit early.