Must Hurry! There’s A Hole In My Bucket List!

I have always loved to travel: in fact, right now I’m in India.

As a wanderer, I believe that if I haven’t used my passport at least three times in a calendar year, I am seriously failing in my quest to see as much as I can in the short time I have left on this planet.

For me, travel has become a hopeless addiction, an unstoppable craving, meaning I constantly lust after the impermanent, a yearning to be on the move. I needn’t go far, just somewhere new, somewhere ‘fresh’ where I haven’t been before.

 I think it was Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman who popularised the phrase “The Bucket List” in the mediocre film of the same name. The film followed two geriatric terminal-cancer patients on an unlikely journey to do remarkable things before heading off to meet their maker. From that cinematic creation, everybody’s personal ‘wish list’ suddenly had a name, and the bucket list as a moniker was universally adopted into the worldwide vernacular.

“Kicking the bucket” is, in my humble opinion, altogether too jolly a euphemism for the act of dying. The phrase, as far as I can work out, is actually derived from the old French word buquet, meaning a balance or beam from which slaughtered animals were suspended upside-down to bleed out slowly. 

Lately, that same ‘bucket list’ has moved beyond travel destinations and become an exercise in wishful self-improvement, such as learning another language, practising yoga, becoming an accountant, or, for the exhibitionists among us, streaking naked across the pitch at a major football match. 

Actually, when you think about it, the phrase ‘bucket list’ does have an almost ‘devil-may-care’ attitude about it, rhyming perfectly with the expression ‘fuck it’.

Patricia Shultz’s “1000 Places to See Before You Die” has no doubt made things much simpler for those following the bucket-list trail. She has thoughtfully compiled a mouth-watering array of exotic destinations for those who feel they are hurtling towards their untimely demise and must therefore hurry to the nearest travel agent to fulfill their quests.

Not to be outdone, Mimi Sheraton hopped on the bandwagon with her weighty tome, “1000 Foods to Eat Before You Die,” which, no doubt, appeals to those who wish to exit this life in an orgy of self-indulgent gluttony.

For those with little or no imagination, you need not fret, for some clever IT type has developed the ingenious ‘i wish app.’ This delightful piece of software will fill the proverbial bucket to the brim on your behalf with suggestions on everything from bungee jumping over the Zambezi to meeting an Emperor penguin in Antarctica. If that were not enough, the ‘i wish’ app will diligently keep track of your progress along the way, dispensing timely reminders, no doubt by issuing forth annoying little beeps, letting you know that your tardiness has been noted, meaning that you are falling behind with your allotted tasks.

So, what is the appeal of the ‘bucket list’?

Is it simply about fulfilling a dream of having seen the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, or the Mountains of the Moon, so that once done, it can be safely crossed off the list and entered into the app as ‘been there, done that’? 

 Lately, the tireless pursuit of fleeting experiences seems to have more substance than an extended entanglement in something that should be savoured and enjoyed. The dogged pursuit of the 1000 things to see, eat, or listen to before you die will result in frantic ten-minute dashes hither and thither to see or ‘experience’ something spectacular, which must be quite exhausting. However, it will go a long way towards fleshing out one’s experiential résumé and, at the same time, keep one step ahead of that pesky app. 

One should, however, take time to remember that “there is more to be seen than can ever be seen, and more to do than can ever be done.”

Now, having said all of that, I must away to swing from my own personal buquet as I have a train to catch.

 Paul v Walters is the bestselling author of several novels. When not cocooned in sloth and procrastination at his house in Bali, he scribbles for several leading international travel and vox pop journals. His latest offering, Scimitar, was released in October 2016, and his latest offering, Asset, will (if procrastination doesn’t trip him up) be released in late 2017.