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My feeling is that Heaven is a mindset, not a destination. I do, however, sometimes think about what type of place Heaven would be if it was in a fact a "place". I came to the conclusion that for a location with such expectations put on it to serve purpose, it would have to combine some aspects of life as we know it with the completely fantastic. There would have to be no ill will. Disagreements would still happen, but they would always resolve amicably. There would have to be some way of making progress. Without advancement, even utopia could get extremely boring.
The main concept that has to go is a huge one: Hell. I don't see how a place could ever be regarded as "paradise" if we aren't all there. How could one live in eternal bliss knowing that most of their friends, loved ones, or even just influences are languishing in damnation? That seems contradictory to what I understand being an "angel" to be. I imagine a place where Hitler and Jesse Owens play chess together. J. Edgar Hoover and his partner would have MLK and Coretta over for dinner. Tupac and Biggie headline Summerjam in Heaven. The absence of evil and hatred in people would be the primary difference between Earth and Heaven.
There would have to be some sort of challenge still in existence in Heaven. The feeling of rising up from something seems like a feeling that any place that is eternal would need to have. I just imagine that "suffering" would not exist. There would have to be different levels of bliss on order to prevent boredom from setting in.
Honestly, the more I actually entertained the idea of a Heaven, the more I saw how preposterous of an idea it is. The existence of an afterlife is not a silly concept. It is the idea that we could possibly fathom what life after death is when we do not understand what life itself is, that makes the conventional view of Heaven seem insane.
It has only been recently that I have been able to honestly give an appraisal of my parents. The reason for this is that no matter how old my parents get, and no matter what my age is, I measure myself against the way they were in their thirties. I am currently in my early thirties, so I am entering a phase that is congruent to my "yard stick". As would be expected, I find myself empathizing with my parents in most cases. My mother is very, very cautious yet happy. She grew up in a fairly controlled environment, racial tensions not withstanding. My father is fearless, to say the least. He flew airplanes in the Air Force. He was color blind for Christ's Sake! Fear is not so much of an issue for my Father, but I can say that his happiness is more subdued. I can look at each's handling of their lives (parenting included) and see what they were going through. My mother believes that the world is a much more dangerous place today than it was 50 years ago. This is because in the 60's (my Mother's "golden era"),there were not 500 tv channels, each with their own version of "Fear Tonight" (also known as "The News"). Even with my mother being young and Black at one of the most racially tumultuous times in our history, she still thinks more perils exist today for the youth. What this means is, the more information she receives, the more scared she becomes. Ignorance keeps her happy! However, she is unaware of the statistics that tell us that several fatal situations occur less often than ever ( car crashes, AIDS related deaths, etc.). There is a delicate balance she maintains to be positive, nonetheless. As a child, I thought that my mother knew everything. There appeared to be no way that someone could point out that many without having an endless amount of knowledge about the world. I did not have the maturity to see that knowledge begets more knowledge until one is left with a healthy understanding of say, what causes a cobra to strike, as opposed to an unhealthy and paralyzing fear of cobras all together. Boiled down to it's stock, my Mother's fear was of the unknown. Fearing the unknown is like fearing failure: The fear as an emotion creates more of the very concept one is seeking to avoid. My father is nothing if not a hoarder of information. For him to not know is for him to be somewhat crippled. There is no balance, it's know or die. He spent the late seventies and virtually all of the eighties flying planes, which of course provided him with a certain confidence. The statistics concerning one's chances of being in a car crash versus a plane crash on his side, his taste for life has a more adventurous flavor. He's a modestly happy guy. He has fond memories of comrades and heroic missions, but also of crushing defeat and the loss of some of those same friends. I did not realize it, but when I saw my dad coming out of a huge plane in a flight suit, I was seeing someone who had just encountered unfathomable dangers. He would be home for a short time, then it was back to the skies. I'm sure there were time's where the hug he gave me upon returning home was more than just a formality. When I was nagging him about getting a shot at Burger Time ( his favorite video game), the thought never crossed my mind that he may have been trying his best to balance the banality of home life with the insanity of air reconnaissance. First of all, I must state how fortunate I feel to know both of my parents, and to have them living. They aren't just clues to who I am, they are parts of the source. As an adult, what they were able to accomplish is no less amazing. Their shortcomings actually add to this, seeing as they are just more obstacles they had to overcome to enjoy the comfortable lives that they do today. Our relationship has transitioned to more peer-like, which in my eyes garners no less respect than they do as parents. I understand that you spend all of these years thinking at some point you'll be a grown up, but instead grown up things happen to you and you scream "I'm too young for this!", even if you're 33. I can hardly imagine how surreal it must have been to be flying through the skies at my age, but that is what my father was doing. To take care of two children while constantly thinking of a spouse who is in harm's way must have been almost debilitating at times. I hope that my wife and I can stick to it in the manner that my parents have. If my heritage is truly a barometer, the future is promising.
