I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I have always been intrigued by the concept of reincarnation.

Being intrigued by it doesn't mean I believe in it necessarily.

It just means I find it fascinating.

What interests me about reincarnation is that it's about transformation and possibility.

Reincarnation suggests, maybe this isn't your one shot, or, to borrow the poet Mary

Oliver's words, maybe this isn't your one, wild, and precious life, after all.

Maybe there will be other lives you'll get to live, other chances.

Maybe you've already lived many lives, and this isn't your first rodeo.

This excites me because it ignites my imagination.

What might I have experienced already that I can't recall in our conventional understanding of memory?

Where might I have lived, and as whom or what,

and what might I do or be next?

Reincarnation also suggests we have more to learn.

Maybe we keep coming back as different beings in different forms to learn the lessons we have not mastered yet. I wonder what I still have to learn

and how I will be taught these lessons. I wonder if I still have to learn and how I will be taught these lessons.

I wonder if I could achieve that here, in this body, in this lifetime.

If not, perhaps there will be another opportunity for me.

I don't have any reason to believe in reincarnation, any evidence for it, but I also don't have any

reason not to believe it's possible. I remain someone who is open-minded but unsure when it comes to most existential and spiritual matters.

I don't know, and I'm fairly comfortable with not knowing.

It's enough for me to ask what if, and to wonder about different possibilities.

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