What happens when we die?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A recurring late-stage question in The Guardian Q&A, with materially different answers on publisher-hosted pages.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Douglas Booth said elsewhere, not written here
We go back from whence we came.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 February 2025 source ↗

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Oh, man. Well, I hope when we die, it’s the same as before we were born. No one’s really frightened of that enormous, infinite blackness before we were born. No one sits there thinking, “Oh, God, how awful. I was nothing.” So I don’t really see why we should be frightened of that after we die, as long as it is black. I really don’t want to be up there on a cloud playing a harp, meeting some of the people I’ve hated in my life. I can’t imagine a greater nightmare. That would be hell, in fact.
Recorded The Talks, 7 May 2025 source ↗
Diana Athill Editor and memoirist
The contributor to the programme I remember with the most pleasure is the man who said that not existing for thousands and thousands of years before his birth had never worried him for a moment, so why should going back into non-existence at this death cause him dismay? Everyone laughed when he said that and so did I, and as I laughed I thought: “Dead right!”
Recorded The Guardian, 23 September 2014 source ↗

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