The Bucket List

I finally watched the movie, The Bucket List, this past week, and it had a profound effect on me. In fact, I saved it on my DVR and will watch it again at least once and maybe twice.

If you aren’t familiar with the movie, which stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, then you might not get as much out of this column, so I’d recommend that you find it and watch it yourself.

I’ll give you a hint: a “Bucket List’ is a list of all the things you want to do before you “kick the bucket” as the saying goes.

We should all have a “Bucket List”, but we shouldn’t wait until we are at death’s door before we start to execute the goals on it. One of the few regrets I have in life is that I never got around to doing things I wanted to do until my health and my age made them too difficult to perform the way I would have liked.

Oh, I have seen the Grand Canyon several times, but I’ve never been able to go down into it either on foot, by mule, or on those huge rafts. That would have been on my “Bucket List”, but I waited too long before I first got to see Grand Canyon.

There are probably a hundred or more things that fall into that category of places to see and things to do that I just cannot accomplish to my satisfaction, and it is frustrating to realize that over and over again.

If you have known me for any length of time, you’ll know that I love to travel, mostly by car and in the United States, and I’ve seen most of the country in the past twenty years. I do have a trip planned for New England next month, so that will allow me to cross off another one of my “Bucket List” items.

Okay, I’m not writing this to complain about what I haven’t been able to accomplish. No, my purpose is to give each and every one of you a wake up call. If there is something you have always wanted to do—or maybe you haven’t yet even thought about it—then don’t wait until too late to do it.

As soon as you finish reading this column, I’d like you to sit down and write out your own “Bucket List.” And if you are young enough and healthy enough to do them, start as soon as possible to cross them off.

To borrow a line from the movie, on learning that both men are in the final stage of cancer, Nicholson’s character says to Freeman’s, “If you think the last 40 years went by quickly, wait till you see how fast the next three months goes.”

Don’t wait for those “…next three months.” Make your own “Bucket List” and get out there today and start doing the things you want to do before you die. You’ll never regret doing it, but you might regret that you didn’t do it.