Why do we need a Bucket List?

In my introductory article here I touched on the times I had been sick enough to need hospitalization and a couple of major surgeries. What I didn’t mention was that prior to my first surgery I had needed around 8-10 bags of blood transfused into my system in the course of a year.

So that was the year my life sucked, big time. Walking 100 steps or more was already an achievement, not to mention hiking up a whole flight of stairs. I had to stop several times to catch my breath and every month those number of steps before I needed to rest got smaller and smaller until it was down to about 10.

I was juggling pain medication every 2 months so that I wouldn’t need to up my dosage too much on any one of them. When I finally got some relief from the pain and managed to sleep, sometimes I’d wake up in bloody sheets like a rape-slay victim. It was not a pleasant experience.

There was even one time my RBC count was down to 6 and dropping and I had to drive myself on my motorcycle to the hospital. I was almost faint.

BTW The trick is to not move your head, just your eyes, and to focus on your breathing. You see if I turned my head the world starts to spin so I had my face planted firmly forward while driving and just moved my eyes.

Anyway, to keep my hopes up, one of my friends suggested that I write a bucket list: 50 things to do before I die. To give me a reason to live and all that. And I want to tell you that it works.

Fifty things at the time seemed too much but my friend said I had to write down 50. It didn’t have to be big or grand, just… 50. So under “study” I had 6 items, and each of them counted as one. “Travel to” also had several locations all considered as individual items on the checklist.

My list included creating a website, learning a couple of other languages, getting my master’s degree, learning martial arts, trekking up a mountain (or two), writing a couple more issues of my print zine, making a business out of my beading hobby, and so on.

I honestly wasn’t suicidal (I guess my friend thought I was). I never thought about giving up, but having that list of things to still accomplish gave me something to look forward to. It gave me joy just thinking about it, like which ones to accomplish first, what I would need (and how much), and how can I earn that much. It’s a lot to think about, but when you’re lying in bed all the time you pretty much have a lot of time on your hands.

My point for this blog post is, with the spate of suicides affecting our society (and the teaching profession) in recent months, it helps to hold on to something that no one else can take away from you. Your family can let you down, your friends can turn their backs, and you are definitely expendable at work. A bucket list can help you refocus on other things that make you happy, the kind of happiness that does not depend on anyone else.

So when things don’t seem to be working out, take out your bucket list and pick something doable in the short term while you get some perspective on what to do for the long term. And even when everything's fine, take out your bucket list anyway to keep you dynamic and prevent you from being stagnant. Life is too short to waste.

Have you made your bucket list? If not, let’s see if you can make your list of 50. Again, it doesn’t have to be big or grand. Just 50. Let me know in the comments.

All images from Pixabay