What Do We Do With The Time We Have Left?

Our story follows husbands Don and Rodney. The world is coming to an end in a couple of weeks because a black hole is moving through the solar system and destroying every planet in its path. Instead of staying safe in their neighborhood, Don and Rodney decide to take a final road trip to keep a promise to someone most dear to them. As they travel, will Don and Rodney come across others with similar ideas, or will they discover a world gone mad over the impending doom that is coming for all of them?

When it comes to extinction, the only other media that comes to mind is Dinosaurs. Watching it as a kid, I thought it was a funny show. However, as an adult, I discovered that I never saw the series finale, which was unsettling to say the least. It ended with a nuclear blast that produced clouds that blocked out the sun and caused a dramatic drop in temperature. The final scenes have the characters wondering if they will survive the nuclear winter, but the audience knows that this was the beginning of an extinction-level event for the dinosaurs. It is terrifying to think about because the dinosaurs didn’t know that the end was near. 

In We Burned So Bright, the characters don’t have that level of hope. Instead, we see characters in stages of grief. While Don and Rodney have accepted the level of disaster that is coming their way, they run into characters on their journey who haven’t made it to that level of awareness yet. They meet a family who is lying to their kids about the black hole that will cause the destruction, which doesn’t surprise Don and Rodney in the slightest. However, they were terrified when they ran into a character who was doing mercy killings before the world breaks apart. For the most part, though, Don and Rodney saw a multitude of signs where people have boarded up businesses because they have similar ideas that Don and Rodney have: finishing their bucket lists before time runs out. 

The cast of characters that Don and Rodney meet on their travels makes you wonder what you would do if you knew you had weeks to live. If I knew that it was just me dying, I would want to travel to Japan to experience the anime and cosplay culture there, explore South Korea’s K-Pop scene, explore the vastness of the Canadian landscape, and experience the warm weather and beauty of Australia before my clock runs out. I would die knowing that I got a chance to see a bit of the world. However, if everyone was going to die…..I would do things differently. Considering that people didn’t handle the global pandemic that well, I would value my safety over everything else. I would either stay at home or find the least hostile place to live, and do the things that I love the most: read books and stream anime until everything goes black. It is not the grandest plan, but those are things that would provide me the most comfort and calm despite knowing that civilization is about to end. 

I think that is why this book is one of my favorites this year because it asks us to question our mortality. Many of us are thinking about how to make it to the next day. Most don’t ask the following question, though:  Are we living the lives that we want to lead? 

Many would say that they can’t afford that luxury. Bills need to be paid, and commitments met. However, would people change their minds if they knew the end was near? I know I would, but I am not sure about the rest of the population. I would hope that people would try to achieve as many goals that are possible before the end comes. However, the realist in me thinks it would be like the pandemic, but on a grander scale: panic buying, discord and fights among people not following proper safety measures, and mixed messaging on what is happening to find a solution on a global scale. I personally hope that as a society we will never have to find out.