Reincarnation: The Beginning After The End

Reincarnation has always been an intriguing perspective, the ideology and belief that selected souls were offered second chances in life after death always filled me with imaginations of being lucky enough to return inside another body with or without the memories of my past life's. However over time, my belief for reincarnation drifted off as i came to realize that it was nothing more than fantasy straight out of a fiction novel.
I belong to a very minor ethnic group in the far side of cross river state with a dialect known as ' Bishiri' that believes heavily on the reincarnation process, infact the entire culture was built around it and my parents were no exception to this belief as they themselves tell stories about the little they remember about their past lives.
As a young lad, my mother in particular would always tell about the attributes that stuck with me currently after being reborn as my own grandson ( yes I was told I am the reincarnation of my grandfather and I believed it completely). One would expect that this would come with a lot of privileges well guess again it only meant I got random backlash to remind me about how much I was terrible in my previous life. My grandmother never really liked me, constantly reminding me how I failed before and if I don't change, history will only repeat itself.

Growing up in this kind of environment really shaped my views on the subject and to make matters worse the animated series which I loved so dearly ( Avatar: the last Airbender) was centered on reincarnation. This had to mean that the reincarnation cycle was real compelling me to spread gospels telling literally anybody who cared to listen about how I had a previous life, what I did back then and how I came back to redeem myself. This persisted for a long period of time until I began to notice cracks in the ideology that were hard to ignore.
As time passed, I began to question the very thing I was groomed to believe. I soon realized that everybody from my village reincarnated from someone else (the entire villagers had past lives) which was contrary to the initial illusion that people who reincarnated were either people who were either unsatisfied with their previous life and special people that did wonderful things getting a second chance as a reward and the results of my findings did not tally with my existing knowledge at all. Every family had a different opinion about who reincarnated who and there was no real evidence to prove and back up this beliefs as people just to clung onto the superstition beliefs and stories from their ancestral origin.
I also began to realize that my belief for reincarnation was not solely a product of socialization but also a coping mechanism to my fear of death. Just like a lot of people I enjoyed the idea of having a second chance to live life whenever I screw up or as pat on the back for a job well on earth. I questioned myself of this was truly a proven belief or just a method to comfort myself about what lies ahead after death.

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