Let’s talk about bucket lists. There’s this notion that you make a list and do things you dream of doing once you find out there’s a finite amount of time left to live; that a finite timeline being given typically involves devastating news. Everything is finite. We just don’t know the exact time frame. It could be tomorrow without knowledge, or six months projected by a doctor that becomes three months all too fast. Or, it could be 40 more years.
We can’t predict our finite lifespans. What we can do is look at bucket lists differently, and do our best to really live.
Bucket lists are great when you look at them in a new light: for me, many of my bucket list items are things I could walk out the door and do right now. Example: I’ve always wanted to get those unreasonably long fingernails that look like works of art, with little sculptural elements and vivid paint with glitter baked in. Sure, I could be limited in my hand use while they’re on, but if the mood strikes, why not give it a go and say I’ve done it, so I know what it feels like to have this thing I’m really intrigued by? On the other hand, there are more aspirational items, like a cruise around the entire world, or packing up, selling everything I own and just traveling abroad for a year without answering to anyone. What’s great is, those things are still possible, but force me to look at risk versus reward. Is it worth literally altering my entire life trajectory to pack up and vanish and find a way to just explore the entire world I have access to? Maybe, but when? Who knows. Maybe I do it, maybe I don’t. But, it’s on the list, and it’s something I think about often. I can’t just walk out the door and do it, but I can decide to plan and point myself in that direction should the time come when I feel strongly enough to pursue it.
I’ve knocked a few larger aspirational things off my list in the past few years that I’m grateful I had the resources and opportunity to do. Visiting El Celler de can Roca in Girona, Spain, was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Having the chance to experience some of the best culinary artistry in the world was surreal, and meeting the artists behind the food was so emotional for me, I cried. That is what bucket lists can feel like. Maybe those wacky nails won’t make me cry with sheer overwhelming gratitude and joy, but they’ll probably give me a solid day or two of glee and laughs. But for me, my bucket list is about choosing and doing things that make me feel like I am living life in a way that feels extraordinary. Extraordinary is a simple concept: anything outside of the ordinary. So, a bucket list item can be as simple as fun nails, or as complex as world travel on a full sabbatical. And it is all extraordinary, just like the fact that we are on a rock hurtling a thousand miles an hour through space, while simultaneously feeling still and grounded is extraordinary.
We are alive. We are breathing. That, in itself, is extraordinary, and a gift from the universe to be assembled in such a way that a bucket list is something we can create for ourselves. We come from stardust, and eventually we will return to stardust, to exist in another form somehow within the universe. For now, we exist here as humans, me writing and you reading. And so, we should find time to truly live as humans, and to do the things that allow us to feel exhilarated by life.
Create a bucket list. Include things that you can walk out the door and do. Find some time to revisit your list and see which things are worth doing right now, and do one. There are far too many people beating the odds handed to them by a doctor, and there are so many more who don’t even consider the idea that their days are numbered just like all of our days are. And sadly, they live without ever truly living. A bucket list shouldn’t be tied to time. Tie it to aspirations, or dreams, unbound by knowledge of when your time may come. Because our time could come today or it could come decades from now.
I wish for everyone to have the chance to live an extraordinary life, even if it is for a moment, with whatever resources and opportunities they have available…however limited or great.