What’s on your bucket list? In just a few days, I will achieve a lifelong goal and visit Mayan ruins. What do you want to do before you die?
In the city where I work many businesses decorate the outer walls of their buildings with interesting murals. One has taken a different route, covering their parking lot-adjacent wall with a single writer’s prompt. The wall leaves lots of room for the public to fill in the blanks with chalk. The prompt is this:
“Before I Die… ________________________”
What would you like to do before you die? People who took the time to answer this mural’s prompt answered:
- Get married
- Afford rent
- Learn much
- Be a millionaire
- Get pregnant
- Make people happy
- Ski the Alps
- Play harmonica
- Find happiness
- Finish E30
- See penguins
- Visit every continent
- Feel
- Love like Jesus
- Explore the world
- Live a happy life
- Go to Japan
- Go to Europe with family
- See the world
- Make a difference
- Travel to every country
- Survive this acid
- Love
- Hold my 1st child
- Live
- Travel to Mongolia
- Love my GF
- Be self-sufficient
- Make change
- Laugh at death
- Dance
- Paddle the Puget
- Go to Croatia
- See Formula 1
- Transcend ego
- Love my BF
- Leave a better world
- Become a teacher
- Move to B——— with my wife and live with her forever
- Figure it out
- Experience
- Walk on the moon
- Show more love
- Stay awake
- Free Palestine
- Clean the ocean
- Go on an African safari
- Cuddle JLO
- Be loud as I am
- [Make] my first million
- Empower other humans to love their [best?]
- For better or for worse, till death do us part
- Atone
Not all of the answers were positive and uplifting. Some also said:
- Revenge
- Kill more people
- Have a sugar daddy
- Porsche & Hoes
- Deport Musk
- Try LSD & go to college
So, I wonder, Dear Reader, what do you want to do before you die? What’s important enough that you want to put it on your bucket list?
The Bucket List
Maybe you saw the 2007 film, The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Screenwriter Justin Zackham also wrote, “The Bucket List: Things to Do Before I Kick It.” Based on the movie and the book, the phrase “bucket list” has become part of our culture’s popular vocabulary. It’s simply a list of the things you want to do before you die (kick the bucket). IMDb gives the movie’s storyline:
Corporate billionaire Edward Cole and working class mechanic Carter Chambers have nothing in common except for their terminal illnesses. While sharing a hospital room together, they decide to leave it and do all the things they have ever wanted to do before they die according to their bucket list. In the process, both of them heal each other, become unlikely friends, and ultimately find joy in life.
In the film, Cole and Chambers discover the immense freedom in anticipating their own deaths. Each day becomes more precious. Each breath becomes a gift.
A Bucket List Adventure
Sometimes, ticking something off your bucket list is a simple matter of adventure. Next week, my wife and I will journey to the Mexican Riviera, where we will soak in the sun and surf. We will also tackle a bucket list item of mine—visiting Mayan ruins. I’ve always envied Indiana Jones’ explorations, which have inspired a real-life fascination with sacred sites and ancient monuments. For me, the trip to Tulum doesn’t hold spiritual significance. It’s just fun. A chance to pretend I’m an archaeologist in a fedora. I’ll bet you have some bucket list items like that.
A Bucket List Quest
Other times, bucket lists hold a greater meaning. Last July, my 80-year-old father who is battling cancer invited my brother and me and two of our grown kids to accompany him on a bucket list adventure. We spent a few days together, visiting churches in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA. These churches were established either by John Casper Stoever, Jr., or his son, a circuit-riding duo who planted scores of congregations in that area.
These two ministers were ancestors of ours. My brother and I (both ordained clergy) were privileged to have our pictures taken while standing in the pulpit our ancestor preached from, nearly three hundred years ago.
For my dad, this went beyond ticking something off his bucket list. Instead, this seemed more of a quest—a way of reconnecting with his ancestors while sharing the experience with his descendants. It was no mere trip. There was a spiritual import to what we were doing.
What’s Important to You?
When I read the bucket list items on the graffiti wall, I am struck by what’s important to different people. Some place priority on physical pleasure. For some, it’s travel to exotic places. Expressions of love top the list, as do desires for revenge. Others shared ambitions for accomplishments. Many wrote about spiritual goals. If I were to ask you, “What do you want to do before you die?” how would you answer? What’s important to you?
While We Live, Let Us Live!
The Teacher of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes (9:7-10) writes:
Go, eat your bread with enjoyment and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
Or, in the words of the old Latin maxim, “Dum vivimus, vivamus! While we live, let us live!” Let each day become more precious. Take each breath as a gift. Don’t wait until you’re about to kick the bucket to begin crossing items off your list. Live each moment as if it could be your last. Invest in your ancestors, your children, your pets, your neighbors, your world.
The Sum of a Person’s Life
In The Bucket List, one of the lines that moved me was when Chambers, played by Morgan Freeman, says:
It is difficult to understand the sum of a person’s life. Some people will tell you it’s measured by the ones left behind. Some believe it can be measured in faith. Some say by love. Other folks say life has no meaning at all. I believe that you measure yourself by the people who measured themselves by you.
What do you want to do before you die? I hope when you get to your final year or your last day, you don’t regret all the things you never did. I hope you spent your life investing in others. That way, when you measure your time on Earth, you’ll find there are a lot of folks who measure themselves by you.
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