The last extra class, ever.

This was an assignment for one of my favorite classes in college :) I also had to pitch my idea of the afterlife in class subsequently, and convert as many as I could to the order.

“When I die, I want to be remembered for the life I lived not the money I made.” -Avicii

The 2017 film Coco has a take on the afterlife that I like to believe the most in. The movie is based on the idea of the ‘Day of the Dead’, a festival with roots in Mexico where the dead are believed to reside in a world of their own as long as they are remembered by the living people. The Day of the Dead is when this connection to the spiritual world is strongest and the dead actually have a chance to meet the people who survive them.

My interpretation of the afterlife is not as direct as the movie or the festival, in that I think that your afterlife is if you are remembered once you die. It’s not a place you got to based on ‘how’ you lived your life, rather if you’re remembered once your heart stops beating. It’s the legacy you leave behind. You live forever on in the heart of the people who remember. It doesn’t matter whether you lived your life doing ‘rights’ or ‘wrongs’, as long as there are people who think of you once you’re gone. You really die when there is nobody left to remember you.

That’s the essence of the movie and the afterlife is not an indefinite extension of pain or pleasure, rather a look back at how many people your life has touched.

Pitch :

Forget about naughty lists & a moral compass. Who decides what right and wrong is anyways ? All I’m asking is to do the bare minimum, just be worth remembering ! All from the comfort of your grave, don’t need to relocate to Heaven or Hell(god knows how difficult it is paying rent each month). No strings attached.