the right moment

today at the gym, as i set my stuff down in the locker room, as my reading material at the moment, a man in his mid-40s came in and saw the book i was reading and grew this peculair look on his face- and at the moment i thought he was going to think of me as a freak, or a new age hippie, or a superstitious sort at best. he asked me what the book is about.

the book is titled 'is there an afterlife' by david fontana.

i told him the book was about the scientific inquiry into the afterlife. protectively, as i said that i raised my fingers and made that 'who knows if it's crack or not' remark. i think subconsciously i didnt want people to acknowledge me as that sort of person- one who is a believer. even though i don't consider myself a believer, but i was so self-concious about being labeled as one that i rather give people the impression that i'm not.

but then he went on and told me his own person stories, and i was surprised by his openness about events in his life that made him believer there is more than what we know. he mentioned some classic cases of premonition, deathbed-visions, and poltergeist events that happpened.

from hearing those stories, i can see that his stories were no different from what i've read about in the books, except now i can attach a face to the stories. he himself admitted that he's afraid to read about stuff like this, as it was beyond his understanding and he just didnt really want to find out more about it out of fear and uncertainty. i've always asked why i never got a chance to experience events like those- not to say that i have never experienced anything extraordinary, but the extraordinary events in my life could simply be coioncidences, wishful-thinkings, or just plain luck. in the end, i reamin a skeptic sort.

but i do hope that one day people will not be afraid to speak about such things- and be able to talk about such events without bringing God or religions into it. not that i'm an atheist, but i feel that when they automatically attach god into their experiences, sometimes their stories lose their credence. if they can simply tell the stories as they happen, then perhaps these andoetal acounts would have more weight as a whole.

paranormal events are things we hardly get to experience, but that dont make them fake.
in facts, sometimes those events changed our lives in ways we never expected.