You Are Not Your Bucket List

You may have noticed the "50 in 500" tab on my homepage.  I am certainly not the first to come up with a thing. These days everyone has a bucket list of things they want to do and see.  It seems to be a symptom of our generation that we want to make sure that we are getting a lot of things "done" in our limited time on this earth.  A noble sentiment.

Lately, I wonder if this mindset is appropriate for the type of activities that one typically finds on these lists.  For example, some of my "goals" include a backpacking trip with friends and family in the Sierra back-country, and a wine-tasting tour with my mom.  The point of these activities is to enjoy the time spent with people that I care about, engaged in activities that I enjoy doing.  I'm not sure that would qualify them as goals.

When Kalvin and I completed the C2C, one of the most difficult day-treks in the world, it wasn't "having done it" that was important so much as the "doing it."  It was the camaraderie, the effort and willpower that was required for every step, the shitty motivational songs that we made up, and it was the triumphant beer-guzzling at the bar afterward that made it worth doing.  The point is, the photographic summit moments are almost always anti-climactic.  The last steps were no more significant than any of the hundreds of thousands before it.  At the end of the day, it was both less and more than an item to be checked off a list.  Less, because an activity done for no purpose other than "fun" is not properly a goal, and more, because the time spent in exertion and challenge, and in the company of good people cannot be defined so easily as with a check mark.

I am too ignorant of the interwebz to figure out how to change the title on my "50 on 500" tab, but I am going to start thinking about it simply as a Someday/Maybe list of things that I would like to do.  There are no time limits, and there are no penalties for anything left undone.  I will simply resolve to live an adventurous life and trust that this will lead me naturally to spend my time among good friends and good times. 

* Thanks to Juliana and Linda who helped me fix the title of the tab

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