Until I watched the 2002 movie, “A Walk to Remember”, I had no knowledge of people making lists of what they hoped to do before they die. Until the 2007 movie, “The Bucket List”, I had no understanding of what a bucket list was.
Since seeing those hilarious, sorrow filled, thought provoking movies, thoughts of what do I want to do before I die have ebbed and flowed in my mind.
Pondering what we want to do before we die first requires that we admit that we will, one day, leave this life that we know. That can, in itself, be a sobering thought. I believe it was pastor and sociologist Tony Campolo who said, “I don’t want to die, I like it here.”
Last year I happened to have gotten a ‘like’ from a woman who is also a blogger. When I checked out her blog I discovered that Ms. Lesley Carter had taught high school in Riverview, New Brunswick … just a hop, skip and a jump up the mighty Petitcodiac River from where I grew up. This meant that we are almost related. She has a brilliant blog called Bucket List Publications which accepts donations to a fund, as well as applications to ‘win’ the means to fulfill a bucket list dream. Lesley works along with her hubby, Darren, to choose at least one lucky winner each month. Her blog writing has inspired me, from my first reads, and the dream fulfilling that they are doing is spectacular.
Bucket List Publications says that this quote, by Eleanor Roosevelt, describes their goals perfectly, “the purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.”
Just this weekend, my eldest daughter introduced me to “the Buried Life” television program. Four blogger guys (Ben, Dave, Duncan and Jonnie … Canadians and Americans) who all attended university together in Victoria, B.C. In 2006 they set off across North America to fulfill their list of one hundred things to do before you die. Then, as each item was crossed off, they would then, in turn, assist a total stranger fulfill one thing that they have always wished they could one day do.
(If you wanna check out this show go to mtv and watch the episode where they help deliver a baby … so worth the watch)
They make the ridiculous fit like a glove with the series, the meaningful the somber. They leave you with the question, “what do you want to do before you die.”
I wonder, what do I want to do before I die?
In so many ways, I have done all that I ever wanted to do, already. But, I might only be half way through this life I have been given, and I feel a need to seek out more from this life than I have already done, and tasted, and seen, and experienced … and given.
The Buried Life guys got their name from a poem written over one hundred and fifty years ago, by Matthew Arnold. Just a small sampling follows :
“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us–to know
Whence our lives come and where they go …
… And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes. ”
What do you want to do, before you die?
itsawonderfilledlife 