9 Things I’ll Do in My Next Life

I’ve been creatively challenged to do something I’m really not good at doing at all – making plans. I’ve tried, tried and tried again, and I’m still waiting for that moment when I succeed at it after all that practice.

This creative challenge comes from The Reverist of Riddles & Reveries, where he writes beautifully evocative posts for his muse.

and it is as follows:

For your next life, you have the choice to create an event for every decade, you also have the freedom to design all aspects of your character, choose your family, spouse, career, people you meet. However, you won’t remember any of this in your next life. What choices would you make? What would the events be? What would your next life be like?

Where do I begin… making a chaotic mess of my next life?

Should I start at the end and work my way backwards… I really should have done that with the life I have now. Maybe that’s what I said in my previous life and… oh… that’s why I feel like I’ve lived my life back-to-front!

I’m really not good at making choices either. The titles of my posts are proof of that.

There are so many options, and each option has several paths leading away from it… I wonder where that leads, aha a fork in the road, let’s go down the mysterious way, no one has ever been there before I must go there and ahhhhhhh….

Aside from all the minor issues, my main problem with meeting this challenge is that I’m not planning on having a next life. And after years of investigating the matter, I may have figured out how to do what I want to not do.

But hey, since my plans tend to go awry when I do make them… here are 9 things I’ll do in my next life:

#1: Swim with sharks or, even better, be a great white

Have you seen the news about Ocean Ramsey and the Great White known as Deep Blue. The images are intensely wow! It reminded me of Valerie and Ron Taylor, and Jacques Cousteau, I was so obsessed with them, with sharks, I wanted to be them.

So I guess, in my next life I could be someone like that who does that, or be the shark.

by Ocean Ramsey

#2: Be a Polymath or a supercomputer

I’ve always wanted to know everything. Not in an unbearable know-it-all manner, but in a Google or Wikipedia way.

I remember when I discovered the joys of knowledge within that heavy and serious set of dark reddish brown (see if I was a polymath I would know what that colour was called… I could look it up, someone somewhere knows it) tomes in my parents’ library. Oh the wonders within Encyclopedia Britannica!

Admittedly some of what I read has probably been debunked… luckily I can’t remember most of it, so I just have to keep relearning things over and over. Which is fun… yet tiresome. I wish I could recall it all.

That’s weird… I used to wish I could forget it all. Be careful for what you wish… I keep forgetting that lesson!

#3: Fly a helicopter/ be a helicopter pilot

When I was some age like 8 or 9 I used to watch this TV Show all about a rescue team working somewhere like in a national park – there were a lot of trees… which made it tricky for helicopter rescues. My favourite bits were the helicopter rescues – that, I thought, is what I want to do and be when I grow up!

I loved watching Airwolf too. OMG those helicopters!!! The story was stupid but the helicopters were awesome.

Airwolf helicopter porn

#4: Be friends with mad scientists… maybe be a mad scientist too

I saw this documentary a while ago about this mad scientist type who was trying to build a machine which could capture the soul – not like a genie in a bottle but in an MRI, brain imaging way. The idea was so brilliantly wild and crazy. I wanted to call him up and say: Dude, I want to participate in this project of yours!

Whenever I read about those symposiums where minds get together to discuss, debate, argue, brainstorm ideas, theories, and puzzles like the Hard Problem of Consciousness… I want to be there and do that. I want in on the action!

excerpt from The Guardian: Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? by Oliver Burkeman

#5: Sail the seas… yup, I’m going back in the water, well on it to be more exact

Many of my fantasies, daydreams, and the stories I told myself before sleep to enter the world beyond wakefulness, were about sailing the seas, getting shipwrecked on islands, exploring the secrets of the ocean.

Many of my favourite books, films, TV shows are about oceanic adventures.

Thor Heyerdahl and his expeditions… I so wanted to do that!

The Count of Monte Cristo!

When I hear about people taking off and sailing around the world… it makes the waters within surge with excitement.

The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer

#6: Live in a castle…

I thought I’d grown out of it, but nope… it would still be hella cool. I was reminded of this the other day while reading an article about this bizarre residential complex which has been abandoned, where each house is a mini castle.

Link to article – CNN Travel: Burj Al Babas: Turkey’s $200 million abandoned ghost town

I had a major crush on Ludwig’s Castle as a child. When I was a teen Neuschwanstein Castle was replaced in my heart by Chambord Castle. And in my early 20’s after a visit there I wanted to live in the Pena Palace.

A castle would make a great hang out for mad scientists…

Pena Palace, Sintra, Portugal

#7: Visit all the places I’m too lazy to visit in this life

I have been lucky enough to have done quite a bit of traveling. I’ve been traveling since before I was born (complicated story… as is everything human). I didn’t always appreciate it, in fact I spent much of my youth wishing I had a place to call home which didn’t change every few months. And that when people asked me where I was from I could give a straight and simple answer.

I’ve only just properly settled down in a house which is the first home I’ve ever owned – it’s quite the adventure.

These days I prefer to travel via internet and TV. And, of course, imagination.

When my mad scientist friends invent a portal which you can step through to spend the day in Seoul… that’ll be my next traveling experience otherwise I’m staying put, with only short expeditions out locally.

Wae!?! Chincha!

#8: Be an Extrovert

In this life I am Hermit levels of Introvert. In my next life I’d like to experience the other end of the spectrum. It looks like fun. But I have no idea if it is fun… so I should find out for myself by being one.

by Oddly Developed Types (I’m an INTP btw)

#9: Learn how to use a massive telescope and star gaze into infinity and beyond

I could set it up in my castle.

And as a polymath I would know what everything I spied was…

Thus if something was out of place, was missing or had suddenly appeared and had never been seen before…

I could show it to my huge collection of mad scientist friends and…

After a quick helicopter jaunt to the Andaman Islands for a spot of sailing and shark swimming…

We could make shit up about it and pop it into the supercomputer encyclopedia and make it so.

Or something like that.

I realise this is probably not at all the sort of post you had in mind when you gave me the challenge, Reverist… it wasn’t the sort of post I had in mind when I first read your prompt.

It’s just what came out when I did it… and although it may seem shallow, it actually is rather deep, for me anyway.

In my next life maybe I’ll do things the way people expect them to be done. Or maybe I won’t.

Over to you!