I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going

“I’m an atheist, I always thought, ‘This is it.’ If there is going to be a heaven, it should be on earth. I feel much happier than most people. I’m fairly stoic about death, but I’m not keen on dying if it’s going to be long and protracted. I don’t have dark nights of the soul, except occasionally. I’m such a little busy bee.” Thus spoke Edmund White, a man who sought truth not in the sky, but in the living moment — who found peace not in promise, but in presence. His words shimmer with quiet defiance, for they are not the boast of a skeptic, but the confession of one who has made peace with the finite. He reminds us that life itself is heaven, if only we dare to see it; that meaning does not wait in some distant eternity, but pulses here, now, in the small and shining acts of being.

The origin of this quote lies in the reflections of a writer who has spent a lifetime observing the human heart. Edmund White, author and chronicler of love and longing, lived through eras of beauty and pain — through the tumult of identity, art, and mortality. His words are neither cold nor cynical; they are the fruit of experience, distilled into clarity. To say “this is it” is not to despair, but to awaken. It is to stand beneath the vast sky and accept both its beauty and its emptiness, to see the sacred in the ordinary, the eternal in the temporary.

He speaks of heaven on earth, and in that phrase lies an ancient wisdom, older than temples. The philosophers of Greece — Epicurus among them — taught that the gods, if they exist, live far from human affairs, and that true peace lies not in waiting for paradise, but in creating joy through virtue, friendship, and understanding. The mystics of the East said much the same: that heaven and hell are not places, but states of the soul. White’s declaration, then, is not rebellion but recognition — that to live well, to love deeply, and to create beauty amid transience, is to bring heaven into time.

He calls himself stoic about death, and in that, too, he joins the company of the ancients. The Stoics taught that death is no evil, for it is the natural end of all that begins. It is not death we should fear, but dying without having lived. White’s calm acceptance reveals the courage of one who knows the limits of control. He does not crave eternity; he cherishes the fleeting hour. His only protest is against unnecessary suffering — the slow decay of the body, the drawn-out ending — not against death itself. For he knows, as all wise souls do, that what matters is not how long we live, but how awake we are while we live.

When he says he has no “dark nights of the soul, except occasionally,” we hear not arrogance, but balance. He acknowledges that even those who have found peace are visited by doubt. To be human is to waver between light and shadow. Yet his serenity springs from action — from the spirit of the “little busy bee,” forever working, creating, moving forward. In this, he teaches that purpose is the antidote to despair. The one who engages with life, who gives their energy to the world, need not dwell long in darkness. The hands that build and the mind that dreams are too full of life to be crushed by the fear of death.

History, too, offers such examples. Leonardo da Vinci, who saw the divine in the mechanics of flight and the curve of a smile, once said, “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a well-employed life brings happy death.” Like White, Leonardo made no desperate cry for eternity; he found eternity in his work. He sought heaven not above, but in the act of creation, in the glory of understanding. Such souls prove that immortality does not belong to those who live forever, but to those who live fully.

So, my child of thought and wonder, hear this teaching: do not wait for heaven — build it. Seek not comfort in distant dreams, but meaning in the hours that are yours. Be unafraid of the finite, for it is within limits that beauty is born. Work as the bee does — tirelessly, joyfully, creating sweetness from what the earth provides. Accept death, but refuse to waste life in fearing it. And when the night grows heavy and you feel the shadow of eternity near, remember Edmund White’s calm laughter: that to live well, to love deeply, and to keep moving forward — that, indeed, is heaven on earth.