Do you love or hate bucket lists? Seems there is no middle ground.
Here’s the philosopher Helen De Cruz with Against Bucket Lists.
She writes, “If it is already so stressful to hit all the societal checkmarks, why should you then add some of your own? The idea might be that a bucket list can give you more focus to achieve the goals you want, but I’m not aware of any evidence that this would be so. Indeed, because you have to achieve the goals before you kick the proverbial bucket, one study, “The bucket list effect” finds that many people put off long-term goals of leisure and play to retirement. They follow a protestant work ethic whereby one delays gratification and then, once retired, they can finally play. What to do when that golden time comes? Oh wait, let’s do what millions of others also have done. It sounds a bit miserable to me. For one thing, I’m a future discounter. At present, I have no idea if I will reach retirement age. I cannot afford to wait to live and do all grind first until I might reach whatever the retirement age would be. Fortunately, I decided against that sort of life in my mid-thirties and tried to always nurture my passions, such as sketching, playing music, reading also for pleasure, recently writing fiction.”
Here’s an older post of mine
Now that said I don’t mind very specific lists, not things I want to to before I die, but smaller scale ones like “places I’d like to ride my bike while I’m still a strong enough cyclist.”
Here’s one such list:
I also keep lists of places I want to go camping in Canada.
And lists of things I want to do each year.
So for me it’s not the list idea that bugs me. It’s the attachment to mortality that seems misplaced to me. I already think our lifespans are far, far too short. There are far too many people I want to spend time with, books I want to read, movies I want to see, papers I want to write, and places I want to go. It seems absurd to pick a list of them that matter most and say those are things I want to tick off my list before I kick the bucket.
Given how ridiculously short life is, it makes more sense to enjoy and appreciate the opportunities that come my way. There is no shortage of them.
How about you? How do you feel about bucket lists?
Yes yes and yes!