I have been thinking about reincarnation. Not because I necessarily believe in it, but because, frankly, if there is a system in place whereby we are all given multiple opportunities to get life right, I have several questions.
First: Who approved this?
Because the idea sounds wonderful on paper. You die. You come back. New body. New life. Fresh start. Wonderful. Except apparently you don’t remember anything. Which raises the obvious question: What exactly is the point?
Imagine taking a final exam, failing it spectacularly, being told you may retake it, and then being handed a completely different exam in a language you don’t speak. Then someone leans over and says, “Good luck. Try to remember what you learned last time.”
What?
I DON’T REMEMBER LAST TIME. That’s apparently the whole arrangement.
You are expected to improve spiritually through multiple lifetimes while being deliberately deprived of the study guide. Brilliant. Apparently the universe believes the best way to teach us is to erase our previous notes and send us back into the classroom.
And then there are the people who claim they remember previous lives.
I have always been fascinated by these stories. “I was a medieval knight.” “I lived in ancient Egypt.” “I was a princess.” Nobody ever says, “I was a guy named Gary who sold insurance in Cleveland.” Apparently nobody reincarnates into mediocrity. Everyone was Cleopatra. Nobody was Cleopatra’s accountant. Nobody was the guy who repaired the chariot wheels. Nobody was standing in the background saying, “Your Majesty, the quarterly budget is going to be a problem.”
And if reincarnation is real, I have another concern: What happens when you finally get it right? Do you graduate? Is there a ceremony? Do you receive a certificate? After seventeen lifetimes, do you finally get some celestial administrator pulling you aside and saying, “Congratulations. After several thousand years of repeated attempts, you have demonstrated sufficient personal growth. Please proceed to the light”?
And what if you don’t want to?
What if you finally reach the end of the process and say, “Actually, I’m good. I’d like to sit this one out.” Is that allowed? Or does some cosmic admissions office say, “Unfortunately, you’ve already been assigned a new life. Your next incarnation begins Tuesday.”
Because there is something vaguely unsettling about the possibility that death isn’t an exit. It’s just… a transfer. New body. New parents. New problems. Same soul.
And maybe that is what makes reincarnation so strangely appealing—and so strangely terrifying. Maybe it isn’t really about getting another chance. Maybe it’s about being given the same lesson over and over until you finally stop being an idiot.
And suddenly, that explains a lot.
Perhaps the universe isn’t punishing us. Perhaps it’s just looking at us with the exhausted patience of a teacher who has already explained the material six times and saying, “Okay. Apparently we need to try this again.”
Maybe some of us are simply very slow learners.
Maybe that person who keeps making the same mistakes, choosing the same terrible relationships, repeating the same arguments, and wondering why life never seems to change isn’t cursed. Maybe they just haven’t passed the class yet.
And perhaps that is the strangest part of the whole idea: If reincarnation is real, then we may not be here to become perfect. We may simply be here to become slightly less foolish than we were the last time.
That would certainly explain why progress can feel so slow.
We stumble through one lifetime, learn a few things, forget most of them, and then apparently come back and start over. We make mistakes, hurt people, get hurt ourselves, figure something out at the worst possible moment, and then die just when we think we might finally be getting the hang of it.
Then, apparently, we wake up somewhere else.
New body. New parents. New problems.
Same homework.
Maybe that is why the idea of reincarnation bothers me. Not because I’m particularly afraid of dying, but because I had always assumed death meant I was finished with all this.
Imagine discovering that it was merely the end of the semester.
And somewhere, in some office beyond our understanding, there is a cosmic administrator reviewing our progress report.
They look at the file. They look at the number of mistakes. They look at the notes from the previous lifetime. They sigh deeply, rub their temples, and type one final comment into the system: “We’ll discuss this next lifetime.”
Apparently, once wasn’t enough.
There’s more waiting at https://xinkblotz.com.
Telling stories, sharing thoughts, and drinking coffee. A blend of fiction, reflection, and whatever’s brewing—one post at a time.
Stories have always traveled best by word of mouth. If one of these finds a place in your heart, I’d be honored if you’d drop a like or share it with someone else.
© 2026 Mariano Velez ~ InkBlotz Press
Leave a Reply