Bucket lists

[Rhiannon]

I know NS has alluded to this before, but I've just been reading something elsewhere about how we tend to sleepwalk through life. Someone commented that the trend for everyone to have a bucket list isn't so different from the previous obsession with having stuff.

One of the oddest things I've found about dating this past year or so is the number of people who define themselves by their travels. Well yeah, so there's a photo of you in Indonesia, that tells me jack about who you are, what moves you, what your passions are. I was struck by how much of their lives appeared to be stretches of nothing punctuated by brief moments of being alive somewhere, captured in selfies and social media.

Not really sure where this post is going but it's given me stuff to think about at any rate.

[Nearly Sane]

Ah, brilliant post! Thank you for starting the topic. My posting was about what the meaning of carpe diem is for me and it isn't the bucket list things, but oddly I was talking about my bucket list at lunch in a favourite place with Gordon.

So yeah, there is a photo in Indonesia, not of me but orangutans, and it was every single moment I might want. They are us, and we will eradicate them. Was going there even problematic? Or did it, as I hoped, help?

Some of what I see on here is astounding, well written moments, that without the medium would be lost and even with the medium will disappear. But, hell, it"s been a blast

[Shaker]

Never really been on board with this whole bucket list thing - it produced a mildly touching film with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman but as a concept it has always struck me as a bit of a box-ticking approach to life, a bit like going somewhere with lots of well-known sights and attractions - Paris, say, or Rome - to 'do' them for the sake of being able to tell others that you've done them rather than for their own sake.

Perhaps it's just me - I've never had a life plan and realise more and more as I get older that I have bumbled haphazardly through life and continue to bumble haphazardly through life with zero thought given to any plot, plan or direction, and that's fine by me. Not sleepwalking - ambling. The idea of trying to cram in X number of things before I die seems a rather cold, calculated and bloodless way of living to me. I've done some of the things I thought I'd enjoy doing, not all by any means, and I'm content with that.

[Bramble]

I was struck by how much of their lives appeared to be stretches of nothing punctuated by brief moments of being alive somewhere

Keeping up the 'being alive' can be bloody tiring. I tried this in my twenties and ended up so sated with 'experiences' that I had to take to my bed for a while. If nothing else it cured me of bucket lists. Whatever a good life might be it doesn't consist in stuffing as much excitement between its 'bookends' as time and funds permit.

[Nearly Sane]

I think some here are struggling with the restrictions they place on the idea. So of you think it is all about excitement, it seems self fulfillingly problematic if that isn't what you want. Essentially it is surely about if you reallly want gp to something, do it?

I do want to learn to ride a horse and play real tennis, but they are not definitional and I seize life by loving and being loved. 

[Rhiannon]

Ah, brilliant post! Thank you for starting the topic. My posting was about what the meaning of carpe diem is for me and it isn't the bucket list things, but oddly I was talking about my bucket list at lunch in a favourite place with Gordon.

So yeah, there is a photo in Indonesia, not of me but orangutans, and it was every single moment I might want. They are us, and we will eradicate them. Was going there even problematic? Or did it, as I hoped, help?

Some of what I see on here is astounding, well written moments, that without the medium would be lost and even with the medium will disappear. But, hell, it"s been a blast

Thank you. 

Still no idea where I'm going but hey...

Orangutans. Yeah, I get that. I feel the same about cetaceans. I cry watching films of them and want so much to travel to see them - and I know I don't need to go far - but I don't know why. Does it make sense to say that I feel some kind of connection? Probably not. But it's not a possible for me at the moment anyway, and if I did focus on such things I would indeed be losing my life to bucket list dreaming.

Carpe diem is about saying yes to things, isn't it, when they come our way? When someone says, come on, this is the next step in the dance, and you take it even if you trip over your own feet at first. Or you think to yourself, look, there's something, go that way. And never missing the opportunity to be with those that matter, or to tell those that you need to that you love them.

Yeah, this place is a blast. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. 

[Rhiannon]

Keeping up the 'being alive' can be bloody tiring. I tried this in my twenties and ended up so sated with 'experiences' that I had to take to my bed for a while. If nothing else it cured me of bucket lists. Whatever a good life might be it doesn't consist in stuffing as much excitement between its 'bookends' as time and funds permit.

Very well put. One of my nomadic friends finally admitted to me not so long ago that his constant travelling was actually a form of running away. Well, no shit.

[floo]

I have never had a bucket list, I just take each day as it comes.

[Shaker]

Yeah, this place is a blast. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. 

You certainly wouldn't have missed it anywhere else 

[SusanDoris]

I know NS has alluded to this before, but I've just been reading something elsewhere about how we tend to sleepwalk through life. Someone commented that the trend for everyone to have a bucket list isn't so different from the previous obsession with having stuff.

One of the oddest things I've found about dating this past year or so is the number of people who define themselves by their travels. Well yeah, so there's a photo of you in Indonesia, that tells me jack about who you are, what moves you, what your passions are. I was struck by how much of their lives appeared to be stretches of nothing punctuated by brief moments of being alive somewhere, captured in selfies and social media.

Not really sure where this post is going but it's given me stuff to think about at any rate.

Interestingly, and I might have mentioned this way back in the dim and distant past on the BBC boards, I was involved ,with a friend, in running a small-scale (local to where we each lived)   marriage bureau! We met our clients personally and introduced suitable people to each other. It was extremely interesting and a complete contrast to my day job of teaching. I personally introduced three couples who married. We would have carried on longer than the 3-4 years we did, but both of us had more responsibility in our teaching jobs and we closed it down. We never actually covered our costs, but that didn't matter. No internet dating back in the 70s!

As far as travel is concerned, I thought when I went to Australia that I'd be out and about every weekend visiting places, but quickly realised that when you travel and see new places and new people, you need to have quiet times in between to allow those thoughts and images to file themselves away in the brain.

I don't think I have anything on a bucket list. I must have a think about that.

[ekim]

I know NS has alluded to this before, but I've just been reading something elsewhere about how we tend to sleepwalk through life. Someone commented that the trend for everyone to have a bucket list isn't so different from the previous obsession with having stuff.

One of the oddest things I've found about dating this past year or so is the number of people who define themselves by their travels. Well yeah, so there's a photo of you in Indonesia, that tells me jack about who you are, what moves you, what your passions are. I was struck by how much of their lives appeared to be stretches of nothing punctuated by brief moments of being alive somewhere, captured in selfies and social media.

Not really sure where this post is going but it's given me stuff to think about at any rate.

Bucket lists could be seen as a collection of unsatisfied desires which appear to need satisfying before death.  If they are portrayed as achievements to puff up an ego, then, as you say, they are not much different to displaying possessions for a similar reason.  The fact that they are presented as 'selfies' seems to support that.   One of the things that puts me off of some travel programmes on television is that they often seem to be more about the presenter than the scenery, or perhaps it is the cameraman's obsession with the presenter's celebrity status.

[Rhiannon]

Yes, I agree with much of the, ekim. And I feel that the selfies are somehow 'proof' of living 'a life less ordinary'. In fact I find travel quite ordinary, if interesting. Extraordinary lives don't require a passport.