Not a Bucket List

A bucket list is a synonym for things you want to do before you kick the bucket or things to do before you die. The concept is lightly morbid, but overall a pretty good idea. The bucket list concept assumes (rightly) that much of life is humdrum, routine, and occasionally drudgery. It's a simple fact, not a bad thing. "Living the dream" day after day is mainly an immature fantasy or mirage. Concluding this does not mean that our life experience can't be studded with amazing, wonderful experiences, or lived against a backdrop of loving relationships. Many of us want a few peak experiences mixed in with our workaday existence. How can a life be lived toward this end? It helps to know yourself, your aspirations, your dreams. This can take the form of a bucket life, which generally implies fairly passive, short-term experiences—traveling to Machu Picchu, skydiving, lunch at Chez Panisse. There is nothing wrong with such goals, but experiences are different from achievements—running a marathon, getting an advanced degree, sending your kids to college. Bucket lists are okay as far as they go, but pale when compared to achievements. Both bring pleasure and satisfaction, but the satisfactions that accompany achievements are fuller and richer, and can they reverberate with good feelings for the long term.