There are movies, there are books, there are websites, and there are all sorts of folks offering advice on the subject. But, when it comes to a bucket list each of ours is a personal thing. What we want to do and what we feel we need to accomplish before we shuffle off this mortal coil is different for each person. The exercise for today, from my great list of exercises to do, is “What is at the top of my bucket list.”
I never thought so much about having a bucket list myself I have things I’d like to do in life, places I’d like to go, and people I want to meet, but I’ve never put them on a list of “things I have to do before I die or I am going to die.” I’m also very happy to say that a lot of the things I wanted to do in life I have already done. Not because I set out with some dogged determination that I had to accomplish something, but because I just did. It’s kind of like the old Nike ad of “just do it”.
Two of the things that I had always wanted to do envolved traveling. The first was to go to Ireland, and the second was to visit England. Luckily my father got invited to speak at a conference at Trinity College in Dublin 1992 and amazingly he asked my sister and me if we wanted to go along. How could anyone turned down such an invitation? We spent a marvelous week in Dublin and some other southerly parts of Ireland enjoying the history, people, poking the Book of Kells (well not really, I poked the case) and generally exploring and having a good time.
Later, on our 15th anniversary, my wife and I got a chance to go to England. She had a relative living just outside of London who kindly offered us full use of their house. They were to be away in Rome that week! Again, too good a deal to pass up – and we didn’t. I don’t think anyone could hit all the high points of the London area to lifetime, but we did a good bit. And I also did something I really wanted to which was visit Abingdon, the home of the original MG factory. Also got to visit Warwick Castle, Bath, and catch Phantom of the Opera at the Queen’s Theatre.