Day 3 – Bucket Lists
What would you do if you were told you were going to die in three weeks? Once you were over the initial grief, shock and anger, would you spend your last days with your nearest and dearest? Would you live carefully, hoping to stave off the inevitable by not taking any risks? Would you scour the world for cures? Or would you do all the things you’ve always wanted to do, living every day to the full?
I’ve just watched the 2006 film The Last Holiday, starring Queen Latifah, in which a sales assistant is told that she has a rare disease and will soon be dead. She decides that she has played life too safe; she quits her job and heads off to a luxury hotel, somewhere in Europe, to blow all her money. She has a go at many of the things she has always wanted to do; of course, she is brilliant at everything she attempts, impresses almost everyone she meets and makes a clutch of influential friends. Inevitably, she has been wrongly diagnosed, she’s not dying and she gets to marry the man she loves. It’s not the greatest film in the world but it has a certain feel-good factor, it was easy early evening viewing and anything with Queen Latifah in it has to be worth a watch.
Many people, apparently, have so-called bucket lists and there are, in fact, several websites devoted to them. People use the websites to list the things they would like to do. Some are physical or endurance aims, like running a marathon, swimming with dolphins or bungee jumping. Others are about academic or creative fulfilment, such as finishing school, writing a novel or inventing something that they will be remembered by. The websites are another form of social networking; contributors comment on and score each other’s lists. Those I looked at also try to sell life-coaching or self-help materials to people, a somewhat cynical attempt to cash in on people’s lack of fulfilment, I thought.
I’ve had a list of things to do before I die for some time. Not, I hasten to add, because I expect to die any time soon (fingers crossed!) but because of an awareness of the passage of time and, maybe, some missed opportunities. I also have in mind words from a John Lennon song “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. Having seen a number of lives, lived as a sort of drudgery or cut short without warning, I believe that the way I live my life is important. What I achieve and the good I do, matter because, when all’s said and done, I’ll be a long time dead.
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