‘If you believe in heaven, why spend your days living in hell?’
Building Heaven Where You Stand
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill
I was raised with a very particular picture of hell. My mother, out of the Greek Orthodox tradition, told me that hell was being trapped in an extremely hot place forever, desperate for water to quench your thirst, and only ever getting the occasional drop. As much as I wanted to accept it, something in me never quite could. A soul being thirsty didn’t sit right with me and thirst is a human experience, not a soul’s one. My idea of heaven and hell has been something I’ve kept revisiting my whole life, with fresh eyes, as I’ve gone through my own adventures. And I say this with genuine respect for everyone’s beliefs, whatever they are.
Here’s what I’ve come to notice and whatever waits for us later. We don’t actually wait for hell. Most of us are busy building a version of it right now, and calling it “just life.”
The Hell We Build Now
In my book I describe a place in the mind I call ‘The Tip:’ a cluttered, noisy dumping ground stacked with old wounds, stale fears, and the echoes of every voice that ever told us we weren’t enough. When we live down in ‘The Tip,’ replaying the hurts, rehearsing the worries, we are living in a kind of hell, not one waiting somewhere in the distance, but one we wake up inside of every morning.
And the cruel part is how normal it starts to feel. We tell ourselves peace is somewhere else, or some other time or when once things calm down, once the money’s sorted, once the kids are grown, once we’ve earned it. So, we postpone heaven and keep living in the hell, as if peace were a place we’ll arrive at rather than one we could start building today.
Heaven Is Also Here
Because the other place is just as close. In the book, the opposite of ‘The Tip’ is ‘The Garden:’ a vibrant sanctuary within the mind, a place of calm clarity and fertile growth. I picture a sunlit garden bursting with colour, sweet fragrances on the breeze, birdsong in the air. Thoughts are clear there. Emotions flow — joy, gratitude, love, hope. The body loosens, sleep comes easier, connection with others deepens.
And this is the important bit: ‘The Garden’ is not an escape from reality. It’s not pretending everything’s fine. It’s a cultivated space and something you tend and grow, right in the middle of your real, ordinary, messy life. Heaven, in other words, isn’t only a reward for later. It’s a garden you can start planting exactly where you’re standing right now.
You Get to Choose the Path
So why would anyone choose the hell when the heaven is just as available? Mostly because we don’t realise it’s a choice at all. The path to ‘The Tip’ is just so well-worn, so automatic, that we walk it without noticing we’re walking.
What we do holds the power to choose which paths we follow. Every time you choose differently, catch the old spiral, turn toward something kinder, tend one corner of the garden instead of adding to the pile you’re forging a new trail toward ‘The Garden.’ Do it often enough and the trail to heaven becomes the well-worn one, and the old road to hell slowly grows over.
Start Where You Stand
You don’t plant a whole garden in a day. No gardener ever has. You clear one patch, put in one thing, and tend it. And as I say in the book, when you choose to tend your inner garden with persistence and grace, it flourishes and it transforms not only your life, also in the lives of those around you.
If right now, you’re walking through your own hell, don’t stop and set up camp there. As Churchill said, ‘if you’re going through hell, keep going.’ Keep walking with one small choice at a time, toward ‘The Garden.’ Will you stumble? There are times we all do, brush yourself off get up and don’t postpone your peace waiting for a heaven somewhere else. Start building it right where you stand.
A Question to Sit With
Before the week runs away from you, ask yourself this honestly:
What’s creating your living hell right now, and what’s one small piece of heaven you could build today?
Not the whole garden. Just one patch. Plant it, tend it, and let it show you what’s possible right here, right where you already stand.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? — Navigating the Paths Between Chaos and Clarity → Get the book