Immortal Souls

In our reading we did this week we read about Socrates beliefs on the human soul once someone dies. He's telling his friends not to be worried and not to be sad becuase his soul will live on . This got me thinking. When someone believes that their soul will live on once they pass then wouldn't that take all of the fun out living? I mean if you know that what you do on Earth isn't important becuase youre soul is immortal then wouldn't everyone be running around doing whatever they pleased and becoming horrible people? But what Socrates was saying also made me think that he could've been saying that just to keep his friends from being sad, that believing in immortal souls is just a form of optimism. I do believe that the idea of souls dying and there being no afterlife is very bleak. For example, to believe that babies who've been aborted just die and theres no heaven can be very pessimistic. But sometimes what I view as pessimism is just someone being a realist. Essentially, I still don't know if believing in soulds living on after death is just a form of optimism to help cope with death or if it could really be the truth.