Not a Bucket List

Fanny Vassilatos -

I recently re-watched The Good Place and noticed a couple concepts that are really fun to ponder on. One of which is this "whenever you're ready" version of the afterlife. If you haven't followed the series, it's basically about a group of humans, an eternal being and an all-knowing Siri (not a robot) trying to figure out a fair way for humans to get into the good version of the afterlife once they die.

After many versions and failed experiments, in the fourth and final season, they figure out that in order for the afterlife to be interesting, it, too, needs to end at some point. And you get to leave, for good, whenever you're ready. Although infinity is quite long, the authors claimed there's only so much you can do and actually enjoy before you get bored.

So this got me thinking. Were I to land in this version of the good place, what would I want to do before I kick the not-a-bucket?

At first I thought of all the "human" things I didn't get to do on Earth, stuff like:

  • Read every single book on my To-Be-Read list —and then some
  • Write every single one of my ideas down and fill an impossible about of notebooks
  • Learn the entire history of philosophy
  • Learn astrophysics —and somehow get my brain to manage that kind of complexity
  • Learn quantum mechanics —same deal
  • Travel to every city on Earth and spend enough time there to feel like I've lived as a local
  • Try all the clothes and shoes and hairstyles and jewelry imaginable
  • Taste all the foods and sweets and baked goods cause who wouldn't

And then there's the whole category of slightly magical things that are only possible to realistically conceive of when you're in the afterlife, stuff like:

  • Fly through the universe, visit galaxies and check for myself how big it actually is
  • Meet some aliens and magically know how to communicate with them
  • Breathe underwater and explore all of the oceans
  • Go back in time and experience what life was like at every century
  • Visit the future a couple millennia away and then send mystical signals to my fellow humans back in the 21st century so they can maybe fix a couple things

I really enjoy pondering over stuff like this. It makes me realize there are some things I might want to try and do right now, before I kick the bucket, you know, just in case Michael and Janet aren't there to welcome me in the good place.

What would you put on your not-a-bucket-list?

Jeremy Bearimy vector by u/chrisdarby80 via r/TheGoodPlace