I have found my final resting place. I'm gonna be a tree.

Courtesy of The Collective Intelligence:  

Italian designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel recently introduced a new burial technique with the potential to change the world. They call it the Capsula Mundi project, and it's a shockingly simple concept. 

Rather than burying dead bodies in wooden boxes in the ground, bodies are placed in a biodegradable sack like the ones below. 

The sack is then buried in the ground, with a tree planted above. 

The premise is that as the tree grows, it will use the nutrients produced by the human body as it decomposes. 

The designers wish for cemeteries to eventually look more like forests.

Man do I like this idea!

I have never been a fan of funerals, but having a ceremony to plant a tree, now THAT sounds like a celebratory event.

My daughter and I recently discussed this idea and she is all for it. She says she would be much more likely to come and water me if I was a tree, rather than sit and grieve for me if all she could see was a headstone.

And the idea of providing oxygen to the earth after my passing makes me pretty happy as well.

This also falls in line with what Neil deGrasse Tyson has said he would like for his remains to be used for after he breaths his last.

Finally! An afterlife that I can believe in.

And my favorite part is I don't have to live my life by some ancient primitive standards in order to access it.

I'm serious, I think I might do this. I would love to be part of nature and to "live" forever as something that provides life giving oxygen to the planet.

Finally thought of the day.

Ann Druyan talking about love, faith, and the death of her husband, Carl Sagan:

"When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. 

Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . 

The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful."

(Source.)