It’s one of the earliest and most profound questions every child asks: “Where do babies come from?” And one of the oldest that every adult eventually whispers in grief or wonder: “Where do the dead go?” Between these two questions lies the full mystery of human existence: birth and death, arrival and departure, beginning and end.
Science explains that babies come from the union of two cells, a sperm and an egg, a biological miracle that multiplies into a living being. Yet every parent who has held a newborn knows there’s something deeper than biology at work. No laboratory can fully explain the spark that animates that tiny body, the invisible breath that turns flesh into life. Life does not merely begin; it appears. Each appearance is unique and sacred. We call it birth, but it can also be seen as an arrival, as though each soul journeys from a realm we cannot see, choosing a moment, a place, and a pair of arms to welcome it into the visible world.
Children, in their innocence, seem to know this. They come in wide-eyed wonder as if they’ve just left somewhere pure, still carrying traces of eternity in their laughter.
And then, one day, every life faces the other mystery; departure. The body returns to dust; that much we know. But the spirit, the consciousness that smiled, dreamed, forgave, and loved, where does that go?
Across time, people have sought answers. Some speak of heaven, others of reincarnation or reunion with ancestors. Some believe the soul dissolves into the great cosmic energy. Yet beyond these beliefs lies an intuition that love and spirit cannot simply vanish. The presence of someone we’ve loved lingers in memory, in dreams, in the unexplainable moments when their absence feels strangely like presence. Death, then, may not be an ending, but a return perhaps to the same unseen realm from which we first came.
What if life is not a straight line from cradle to grave, but a circle, a series of arrival and return? Perhaps babies come from where the dead go. It’s an idea echoed in faith and folklore alike: “dust returning to dust,” as the ancient Hebrews said; “atunwa”, the Yoruba understanding of rebirth; and even modern physics suggests that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. In that sense, every new-born may be a whisper from the beyond; a sign that existence continues in forms unseen.
In our age of speed and distraction, we rarely stop to wonder anymore. We Google everything but contemplate nothing. Yet these two questions, where we come from and where we go, hold the power to make us humble, compassionate, and wise. They remind us that life is a gift; that every encounter may be part of something much larger than we can perceive; that to live fully is to honor both mysteries, welcoming each birth with reverence and facing each death with peace.
So, where do babies come from? And where do the dead go? Perhaps from and to the same place, a realm where life continues in subtler and less dense form, beyond the limits of our senses. A place that begins in the finer regions of this vast material universe, of which our visible world is but the coarsest layer.
This reflection does not claim to answer the questions, only to move us to deeper thought, to awaken that quiet wonder that once made us ask them in the first place. Yet, if we seek the answers in earnest, with a childlike heart unburdened by pride or fear, we may begin to find glimpses of truth in unexpected places. Between those two great mysteries, we live, we love, we learn. And in the silent moments, we remember that we too are travellers, passing through the densest edge of a greater, living continuum.
