How about riding in the Tour de France? Or writing a best seller? Maybe going snorkelling with sea cows? There’s also getting a pilot’s license, learning an exotic foreign language or spending a year travelling all seven continents. The list of possible human endeavours and dreams is a long one. While it’s impossible to do all of them, many Americans have discovered the pursuit of these grand dreams as a form of
entertainment in and of itself.
Popularly known as Bucket Lists, they are collections of 5, 50 or even 500 things a person might want to do before ‘kicking the bucket’. It’s a popular activity at evenings in the tavern, where friends draw up their lists. It can also be serious business for those who have survived some life-threatening event, such as a grave illness. The trend was popularised by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, respectively portraying a billionaire and a car mechanic in the 2007 film, The Bucket List. Their characters are diagnosed with cancer and they immediately set out a list of things they want to accomplish in their last year of life. The items include: climbing the Pyramids, making a parachute jump, driving a racing car, going on a safari in Africa, ‘kissing the prettiest girl in the world’ (who turns out to be a grandchild), and more.
The ‘Make A Wish Foundation’ has been helping fulfill the dreams of seriously ill children for years. With donations and volunteer help, the Foundation lets a child be, say, a police chief for a day…or a professional ice hockey player, a car designer or a pianist. The Foundation reportedly fulfills the wish of a seriously ill child every 38 minutes. The most famous among these children was 5-year-old Miles Scott, who dressed up as ‘Batkid’ and chased down criminals in the streets of San Francisco for a day in 2013.
Motivational trainer Ryan Eller has illustrated every highlight on his list with a photograph: a dive, a volcano, a tractor-trailor truck, a bungee jumper, a muscular stomach, a pile of money, a sumo wrestler and a rocket launch. The pictures form a mosaic of his fondest dreams.
The best way to draft one’s own list is to draw inspiration from the lists of others, Eller writes. He has proposed 281 points that he regards as fantastic. Sifting through other peoples’ lists, you can come across: luxury (spending a night in the world’s most expensive hotel), celebrity
(drinking coffee with a film star), travel (climbing the Eiffel Tower), animals (washing an elephant), sports (completing a triathlon), courage (performing before a large audience), ambition (getting a doctoral degree), or charity (helping a stranger).
No two people are alike, and so no two Bucket Lists are alike, either. What would seem banal to one person is for the other the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Learning to drive a car and play the guitar, for example, was one woman’s goal on the Bucketlist.org website; another person wanted to have a dog, see falling snow and visit the Vatican. By now writers and publishers have discovered Bucket Lists as a lucrative segment. ‘1000 Places to See Before You Die’, by travel writer Patricia Schultz has been translated into 25 languages. Writer Richard Horne, in his ‘101 Things To Do Before You Die’, on the other hand, says that a life is not complete without once having been arrested, receiving an award and leaving a three-star restaurant without paying.
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