A bucket list is a list of things people want to do before they die. It usually includes things like extreme sports, playing musical instruments or traveling to exotic places. It’s all about the person and their experiences. When the person is gone, the experiences are gone, too.
We at Simply Great Lives want to suggest a different kind of bucket list. We think the bucket list needs to be re-tooled because it is based on a faulty assumption. It assumes that what people value at the end of life is the same as what they value now.
Ultimately, people are far more concerned about relationships than they are about the nifty things they’ve done. When John had his heart attack in 2005 and he realized he could be dying, he asked himself some hard questions. He asked himself, “Did I love people well?” and “Did my life matter?” As it turns out, the two questions are interrelated. And they become the standard by which we gauge how we did in life.
Given this insight, I believe the bucket list should consist mostly of things we want to do that showed we loved people and that made a real difference in people’s lives.
That said, I encourage you to consider what you really want to do in your life. Here are some other-focused things I’d like to accomplish before I die.
- Raise my boys to be godly men.
- Teach, encourage and support people as they find and live their calling.
- Mentor people who want to help other people find and live their calling.
- Participate in ending child sex trafficking in the U.S.
- Publish books that help people grow.
- Partner with individuals, communities and corporations to make “edutainment” widely available.
- Comfort someone who is dying.
- Share God’s love with people and see them fall in love with Jesus.
- Make a generous donation to “positive, encouraging” KLOVE.
- Pet a leopard (OK, that’s not really going to be important in the end, but I do think it’d be really cool!)
I probably won’t be able to do all these things. In fact, I expect my list to change over time. One thing is for sure, though. I want my list to consist of the kinds of things I will be genuinely glad I did while I was alive.
So, if you were to re-do your bucket list, what might it look like? What are some of the really important things you want to do during your lifetime?
