It would be nice if this was a classroom and, depending on how well we do here—how much we learn—we either move on to another life and possibly another orb and learn more until after many interesting lifetimes we finally become one with the universe, The Universal Soul, or stay for another tour until we get this one right. Or, if we behave ourselves here, we can decide what we can be when we return, try a different species, or something other than an Earthling. I’d like to be an Osprey, or maybe a dolphin next time around. And if we continue to be good and become more sage, we can come back wherever we like into any period of history we like—choose our parents, enter whatever strata of society we might find interesting at that juncture, etc. And as we become even wiser we begin to develop a clear memory of our past lives and know the others we knew before. That would be cool. New bodies, aeons of wisdom, old, old, old friends who will never leave you not even in death, and no more “If I only knew then what I know now,” bullshit.
But, there’s no evidence that any of that will happen any more than there is the likelyhood of a God waiting for us in Heaven (I think my version is better) with the threat of Hell’s roaring inferno below Him, awaiting those who are not nimble enough to leap the gap between Good and Evil.
All we really know is what we have here and now, and therefore it behooves us to make the best of it— to live full, exciting lives, to try to do the least harm while contributing to the greatest good for the sake of those who follow us—and leave all the magical thinking to our afternoon reveries. And there’s nothing wrong with that scenario either.