I don’t care what it is you want to be, or do, or have, but whatever it is, do something toward achieving it before the day is over. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Don’t overthink it. It doesn’t have to be anything big. It just has to be something.
###
START A LIFE LIST – Some people call it a “Bucket List” or something like “Things to do before I die”, but I like the term Life List. I think about it now, and it seems odd that I had never heard anyone call it that until last year. It wasn’t until after Cindy started reading the incredibly awesome Maggie Mason, and talking about creating her own Life List that I started thinking about that label. I mean, really, what difference does it make, Bucket List versus Life List?
For most people, I’m sure it doesn’t matter, but maybe it should. A “Bucket List” or a “List of Things to do Before I Die” emphasizes the death part, which is kind of a drag, right? Nobody knows when they’ll die, we just know it’ll be sometime in the future. And isn’t that how we tend to think about having all of those life-affirming experiences? We keep putting them off, thinking we’ll get to them…sometime in the future. For most people, a Bucket List isn’t things they want to do before they die. It’s a list of things they avoided doing their entire lives. It’s like saying “Here’s a list of everything I wanted to do, but I never got around to it.” See, it’s negative, right? (Or maybe it’s just me.)
A “Life List” though seems aptly named because it’s what you do while you’re alive (obviously), it’s what you do with your life, and makes you feel alive. Life, living, loving it all. Let’s focus on that. To me, it’s like saying, “Here’s a list of fun things to do.”
What do you want to do before you die? is really a silly question. Well, of course, it’s going to be “before you die”. You’re not going to do much after you die. The real question is What do you want to do?
In order to follow your bliss, you need to have a pretty good idea of what that is. So, I’m inspired to work on my own Life List this weekend, and I’ll post it when I get it done. I’m sure I’ll pull some items from My Goals List for 2010, but I don’t think I’ll have a hard time coming up with a 100 things (arbitrary number).
So….what do you want to do?
On a side note, I think the #1 thing on your Bucket List should be “Complete everything on my Life List”.
Related posts:
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Every Gd thing. Every thing. Great gulps of life and as much of it and all that it has to offer as long as I am here breathing on the great round globe.
I’ll do anything once. Really.
Sometimes it means puking… Lord knows I’ve done that more than once.
But often it means growing and I hope I do that every day.