Thoughts on The Bucket List

No, this is not a post about the movie of the same name.

The phrase "bucket list" came to my attention, along with many other concepts, sometime during my college years. Until recently, I've unreflectively accepted the idea behind the term, that there are things people want to accomplish before they die. But I've never sat down and made a bucket list of my own because the line between "must-haves" and "would be nice ifs" is always evolving, new ideas are always popping up, and older ideas often lose their luster. Lately, I've come to question the utility of having a bucket list at all, since the things that tend to appears on people's bucket list are not the types of things that make for a deeply fulfilling life. Rather, the bucket list seems designed to engender dissatisfaction with one's normal life and a desire for more exotic and expensive vacations and experiences, feeding the excessive self-absorption of our already overly Instagram-ed culture.

That's my thesis, anyway. Which leads to the following questions: What are the things that make for a deeply fulfilling life? And how can we escape the trap of self-absorption?

My strong feeling is that there are as many answers to these questions as there are people. For me, avoiding social media was an initial step towards less self-absorption. Mindfulness meditation (currently utilizing Sam Harris' Waking Up app) is becoming another important tool in calming mental chatter and realizing the truth of non-duality on both conceptional and experiential levels. And the more the various areas of my life approach the harmony I seek for them, the more fulfillment I experience. Obviously, a healthy marriage is a central goal of my life, one that Mindy and I have been steadily moving toward. To one degree or another on this blog, I have documented other developments in the relational, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and vocational components of my life, and doing so helps me to clarify my goals and reminds me to stay on track. And it's those things, in sum, that add up to a fulfilling life, more than the "skydiving and Rocky Mountain climbing" about which Tim McGraw so sincerely croons.

But you know, he was spot on in the next few lines of that song... so I'm going to do something I never thought I would do: I'm going to end a blog post with a quote from a country music song. For all the cliches, there are still some things to appreciate about good old Nashville country, and one of them is that they sometimes talk about death, which I like. My mantra for the past year is memento mori: remember death. So when he says, "Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying," I think-- we can-- we all can! And we all should, because living in the knowledge of our impending death has a way of keeping our priorities in order and preventing us from wasting our precious life energy, time, and consciousness on petty things. Anyway, here goes the most improbable conclusion to this post, straight from Tim McGraw's sweet lips:

I loved deeper

And I spoke sweeter

And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying...

And I watched an eagle as it was flying.