Bucket Lists

Last night I got tagged by a friend on Facebook with one of those games where you answer questions about yourself and share them with others who are then supposed to do the same. I haven’t decided whether to follow through on it, but might borrow a piece of it for a party mixer sometime down the road. One of the questions was to name three things on your Bucket List.

You may recall the 2007 Warner Brothers film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman about a couple old guys who meet in a cancer ward. The one is cantankerous as all get-out (you can guess which) and the other... Well, the film revolves around a list of things they want to do before they die, their “Bucket List.”

After the two become friends, the wealthy Nicholson character makes it his aim to help Morgan Freeman experience his life dreams, to scratch off the items on his list. We see them skydiving, getting tattoos, visiting exotic locations like Rome, the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal. One item was to help a complete stranger for the common good. Another was to “laugh till I cry.”

I went online to find the source of the notion of a Bucket List and the first dozen entries seem to cite the film itself. I then went to a website that explains word and phrase origins and the meaning became apparent: “Things to do before I kick the bucket.”

Do you have a bucket list? Do you have unfulfilled dreams that you want to accomplish while still here in the flesh?

A Few Items On My Bucket List include:
Visit the Highlands in Scotland
Drink wine with Mario in Italy
See my my short story The M Zone made into a film
Publish an anthology of my short stories
Raise or give away a million dollars for charity

At the top of the list in the movie was this one: Witness something truly majestic. That has a quality feel to it that I like. If we’re going to get into the realm of fiction, what if we each try to live a life that is truly majestic.

This feels a little too high for one such as I, but it might be a good target... if one earnestly meant to do it.

Here’s another, stimulated by one of my favorite films, Groundhog Day:
Live one perfect day. To live a single day with perfect sensitivity, clarity, purity, goodhearted selflessness... What if we made this a daily quest? To do good, and strive to be all we're meant to be. What if...

How about you? What’s on your Bucket List.