Tuesday 11 March 2025
Bucket Lists sound so morbid, exuding fumes of death; after all, the two characters in Rob Reiner’s 2007 film, The Bucket List, written by Justin Zackham and based on his own “List of Things to do Before I Kick the Bucket”, which he shortened to “Justin’s Bucket List,” die before being able to complete every activity or travel to every destination. Therefore, Bucket Lists sound so depressing and because they feel like countdowns to D-Day, the Day you die, I despise the phrase.
Tick, tick, tick! Bucket Lists sound like accusations of things I haven’t yet done. Bucket Lists sound like guilty verdicts of an unexamined and unfulfilled life, like stinging judgements of squandered time and resources, like incriminating damnations of having done nothing with my life. Bucket Lists look like something Death itself would be holding in its skeletal hand, shoving it in my face, mocking me for not living my life according to the list. Bucket Lists feel more like books of the dead than of life.
I have a lot of life to live and have a lot of things to do well before I die. I have not finished writing My Life List and shouldn’t be able to finish it. The point of it should be to live it, experience it, cherish it, and repeat it. I must populate My Life List with more than the typical “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” lists. Again, another hateful and demeaning summation— “Before You Die”—of what should be labeled as “To Improve My Life” or “To Enrich My Life” or “To Cultivate My Humanity” Lists. I am going to see those places WHILE I am living, not BEFORE I stop living. My Life List consists of things I look forward to, not as a lame and depressing tactic to delay the inevitable, or to distract me from the real fact that we are all dying.
Bucket Lists sound so final, giving off a “one and done” attitude. Go there or do that, and never again… well… because you’re dying, and you have so many other items to check off your Bucket List. “You’ve done it, and so why do it again?” You would be wasting time otherwise. There are other items on your Bucket List that need crossing out.
Paris, France was on My Life List, and in 2017, my family and I did go. According to the logic of conventional Bucket Lists, I shouldn’t go back. I need to go back. I didn’t visit Musée de l’Orangerie’s The Water Lilies by Claude Monet. I didn’t visit the house and gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny—which inspired him to create The Water Lilies. I need to visit the cemetery at Auvers-sur-Oise to pray over the graves of Vincent and Theo Van Gogh. I need to visit the asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, from which Vincent Van Gogh composed The Starry Night, and I need to walk in the wheat field where he… you know. Van Gogh’s art taught me to see art, to understand emotion, and to love the emotions in art. He is among my greatest teachers. Going to those Van Gogh sites would be a pilgrimage. I must go again to France.
Barcelona, Spain has been one of the oldest items I placed on My Life List, a destination holding as much meaning as the Van Gogh spots. And for a similar reason: another artist who has affected me profoundly, Antoni Gaudi. I don’t remember where I bought Rainer Zerbst’s book Gaudi: The Complete Buildings. Was it Strand Bookstore or Barnes & Noble? I do remember I was a second semester M.A. in English graduate student when I purchased the large, color photobook. I couldn’t flip through the color pages featuring Gaudi’s masterpieces because the images of his architecture enchanted me; I carefully turned each page, after long contemplation. His architecture convinced me to study Modernism, or at least the nineteenth century and early twentieth century literature. I never contemplated studying Art History; I was utterly seduced by Literature. However, if I did, I would have devoted myself to Gaudi as a graduate, doctoral project.
Bucket Lists don’t sound like celebrations of life, of living right now; instead, they force us to hold ceremonial wakes, sort of like waiting parties until we die. Bucket Lists seem to corroborate the sentiments found in Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” without the earnest urgency to make every moment matter or the determined unwillingness to fade away. At the same time, even in Thomas’ poem the mood is a race against time—his father is dying and therefore the son is pleading he cannot squander the remaining time father has—to resist the dying of the light for as long as he can.
Bucket Lists seem to convey regret, disappointment, or failure if you don’t accomplish your mission to go skydiving, visit Angkor Wat, or learn another language before your time is up.
Why do we wait so long before fulfilling our promises to ourselves to live? You’ll say that you don’t have enough money. You’ll never have enough money. Just go, somewhere; just do, something. You’ll go when you retire and supposedly have more time (and money) to travel. The “perfect” time never arrives, and yet you’ll wait for that hour forever. Worse, you’ll become sick and find yourself in Dylan Thomas’ father’s deathbed. Cue in Iron Maiden’s song, “Wasted Years.”
Bucket Lists sound so trivial and boring, repeating what other people’s Bucket Lists also seem to be repeating from other lists; instead, your Life List must be your own. Your Life List should resonate with personal self-meaning. Your Life List shouldn’t be a competition between friendly rivals to see who goes “there” first. Your Life List at its best is an expression of who we are; it should be illustrations, definitions of who you are. Your Life List should and must inspire you.