The Bucket List…

My wife said “let’s watch a movie that’s fun.”  So I went through the list of movies in our collection naming off the ones that were light-hearted, comedic, and even some silly ones.  As I leafed through the pages of DVD’s I passed the “B’s” and she chose the Bucket List.  Now we had seen this movie before and my recollection is that it was not any of the adjectives for which we were looking, but it struck a chord with her, so…why not.

I spend the next 97 minutes on the edge of tears.  It’s a great movie, don’t get me wrong, it just wasn't what I thought we were investing our time in, but that’s okay.

I don’t know at what age most people begin to contemplate life and consider the things that they wanted to accomplish, but a movie like this has to stir the inner workings of the conscious mind. 

It did for me.

Even as I sit here now pondering future and looking back upon my past I wonder if I have already done the things on my bucket list.  You see, I have never written one, but I can see that what I have lived has fulfilled many of my desires over the period that has been my life.  None of them were terribly earth-shaking events.  I haven’t climbed the Himalayas (nor do I have any desire), and I haven’t parachuted from a plane (I would, but not something that I have to do).

One thing that I really desire is to communicate with people with whom I would not normally have the chance to speak.  Coffee with a former President, a sitting Justice on the Supreme Court, the Dalai Lama.  Stuff like that.  Most people might say “so what,” but then they have their own list, right?

A couple of other things that come to mind is writing the novel that everyone wants to read, writing a song that is on everyone’s music player, and of course the thing that I would hope would be on everyone’s bucket list, do something that impacts the world for good.  Who knows, it may be within the writings that that one is accomplished.

I always thought that a bucket list would be a clear, concise set of sentences that can be crossed off one at a time as it was in the movie.  For me?  Not so much.  I don’t need to climb Everest, sail the ocean, or shoot a big game animal on the African plains.  I still have things I want to do, but they can only compliment the life I have already had.