Beelzebub's Bubbly Bane

I've been thinking about Hell. Not in a pill-bottle rattling in a shaky hand at the temple or a pre-suicidal, double-clutched steak knife sort of way, but in a conceptual way. It has always terrified me that Hell is supposed to be a place with no hope. Of anything. So, in other words, there is never anything to look forward to.


Sure. HE gets a snack.

So what you get is this: After the first thousand years, you know that there are ten-times a thousand years to come, with a million beyond that, multipilied infinity. And never, never, never, is there anything to look forward to. No tasty snacks. No rest. No TV. No snow. No anything. It seems to me that never having anything to look forward to would be the ultimate punishment. And . . . well, there it is. Hell.

In prison, you get visits, if you are lucky. Or you get to walk the yard. Or eat. Or you can look forward to the day you get out. So there's that. Even if you are "in for life," at least you can look forward to checkers with ol' Bubba in block A, once in a while. Or, at the very least, to dying.

So I guess the worst state to be in is one in which you have nothing to look forward to. We really need that. And I think we all have things to look forward to, but we don't always do ourselves the favor of looking forward at them when things are worst. The cool thing is that any of us can do this.