The Bucket List

Last weekend, my wife ran her first marathon.  Not since giving birth to our 2 children have I seen her work so hard with determination and a real sense of achievement.  Unlike most of my endeavors, she attacked it with a "full-ass" effort.  I am very proud of her for setting and going after her goals, and I hope to gain from her experience a bit of motivation.

If you asked me what my goals in life are, I would probably give you a puzzled look, turn and stare at something across the room, and mumble "I-uh-oh".  It's not like I haven't thought about it before.  I have worked on a "bucket list" and have even checked a few things off over the years.  But I feel like the items or my list sometimes seem mundane.  If you tell someone you ran a marathon, they have a pretty good idea of the kind of effort you put in to it.  It's not quite the same awestruck reaction I get when I tell someone I built a really cool sandcastle.  I took another look at my list and found that many items don't require a whole lot of training or dedication.  Is it because I am afraid to set those kinds of goals?  Or is it because the things I want to accomplish in life are more spontaneous, personal, and/or silly?  Here is a sampling of my list:

Build a Boat.  This goal might require a bit more specifics.  Maybe it should be finish building a boat.  I started on a small rowboat a couple years ago, but never got around to making her sea-worthy.  It does make for a great storage space in the garage though!

Skydive.  See, not much preparation needed for that one.  I'm pretty good at falling already.  This goal pretty much comes down to "when will I have enough money to pay someone to toss me out of a plane"?  The answer sounds pretty obvious to most...

Finish a Book.  "Wow!  You actually read a book from beginning to end??  How long did that take?  What kind of training went into that?  Did you do it alone or did you have a support team helping you?"  Yeah, not something that will be at the top of my eulogy.

The rest of the list is more of a collection of weekend tasks such as finish the basement and landscape the back yard.  I don't want to climb Mt. Everest.  I have no desire to visit Paris.  I would be completely content in life if I never spent New Year's Eve in Time Square, drove on the Autobahn, or even met a celebrity.  I just want to do the little things that bring me joy.

Maybe I've afraid that by setting a major life-changing goal, I will be working toward the end.  If I set out to, say, ride a bicycle to California and then upon arrival begin the process of eating said bike, that's a pretty concrete goal.  Once I finish swallowing that last piece of rubber (starting with the tires would be too tiresome on my jaws to finish the rest), I've completed my task.  The thing I wanted to do before I die is done.  I can either set a new, more difficult goal to attain in my remaining years, or sit back, enjoy my 15 minutes of fame, and quietly move on.

I don't want to set a goal that I will have to 1-up later on.  I don't want to set a goal that requires an immense amount of training.  I don't want to set a goal that requires a large amount of money.  So, after looking at all the factors, I have decided on a new feat that I hope to accomplish in my lifetime: To die.

But don't worry, if this task is anything like the hundreds of others I have set out to do, it will take forever and may actually never happen!