The Impermanence of All Things

This is where I come from. I was raised Southern Baptist. I call it polite Southern Baptist. The convention would come around once a year, they'd issue their decrees about women being seen and not heard, and everyone would listen politely and life would go on. I was the granddaughter of the church's resident curmudgeonly pot-stirrer and the church choir's star soprano. So much so that I was labeled a soprano in jr. high and sang the wrong part until my 30's. In my 20's, I was confirmed in the Episcopal church. In between was a long period of experimentation with mysticism, a little dabbling in the occult. So I don't necessarily consider myself a blind follower of any one doctrine. I've read and studied some decidedly non-JudeoChristian things, like traditional Native American spirituality and Wicca, so I am worldly. Right? This is what threw me in a way I did not expect: the ancient Norse people didn't believe in a permanent afterlife. The old Norse religion had a lot of regional, local, even individual family variations, so it is difficult to pin down a unice real concept of an afterlife, but none of the ones I know of are permanent. For someone who goes to live in a nearby burial mound to continue living near family and community after death, the afterlife may have been part-time in the mound, part-time elsewhere. In this arrangement, you will live on as long as you are remembered by your descendants, but one day, nobody will remember your name. What then? Freya and Odin between them collect a lot of the dead to take to their halls. Hel has many in her realm, which, as I've already said, May not have been as good as Valhalla, but wasn't like hell, either. I kind of think of it like hotels, Four Seasons vs. Hampton Inn vs. Motel 6. Bottom line, though, nothing survives Ragnarok. Life in Valhalla goes until Ragnarok, and then game over. It feels like a cheat, what's the point in temporary afterlife? I guess the point is the only constant in life is change. Nothing is permanent, everything changes, and we should appreciate moments as they come for as long as they last, knowing that forever is a fairytale.