One night John died in his sleep. After what seemed like a few hours floating around, looking down upon his inert body, his previous lives started all coming back to him. He had heard about reincarnation but had never had the chance to see what it was all about.
“Hmm, this looks interesting,” he thought to himself, (or one of himselves), sitting behind his cobbler’s bench in 1827. The smell of hide glue heating up in the small tin pot came back to his nostrils. His back was tired, his calloused hands were stiff from pushing the awl and a dozen pairs of stinky shoes were waiting to be mended. He’d been practicing his trade for over thirty years; thirty years of much the same thing. All in all, there really wasn’t much else to say about John the cobbler.
Then he saw himself as John the cowboy, somewhere in Oklahoma, huddling close to a fire while keeping watch on a small herd of cattle. After a few weeks of uninterrupted monotony, he decided to move on to another life; maybe something a little more exciting. At least he hoped so.
Here he now was, crouching in a trench near Reims, a WW1 private first class. Far away, there was an explosion. Then another. Then it stopped for a while. Then it started up again, much closer this time. Then he got blown up and that was it for John the soldier.
Many other lives passed before him: oarsman on a Viking ship, cotton picker in Mississippi, accountant in London, stone cutter in Antwerp. Yes, It was interesting in a certain way; all these different lives. But nothing of any consequence, nothing noteworthy ever seemed to happen in them. Like a lot of other people, John had never been a brilliant statesman, a famous scientist, a king, a pope or anything like that.
It’s hard to say how long, how many hours or decades, these visits to John’s former lives lasted. After all, time was meaningless in his present state. But eventually the time came around for his new reincarnation. Somehow, deep within himself, John could feel his rebirth coming, stronger and stronger.
“Hmmm. Wow! This is exciting!” he thought. “A new life! I wonder what I’ll be next.”
As it turned out, reincarnation was more of a haphazard thing than what certain religions predicted. And this time - at last - John’s new life was exceptional. Unique! Through some metaphysical quirk of fate, he was reincarnated into HIMSELF! He saw himself gradually descending back into his sleeping body: same body, same bed, same bedroom, same everything!
By the time his alarm clock went off at 7:30, he had forgotten all his past lives. He yawned, got up, and, as he put two slices of bread in his toaster, he wondered what the new day would bring.