Highlights of life. And always there: The famous Bucket List!
Who am I? Where am I going? These two short, but infinitely deep, questions are essential for planning your life. Whether you can answer them now doesn’t really matter. Rather, it is confronting these meaningful questions over and over that gives meaning to your own life. Let’s be honest, who can really adamantly answer these questions? And if you think you can answer these questions: How do you know whether this is really the real existing state of life at all?
Adults’ wishlist
Those who want to try to categorize their life time and again, making it measurable, even if this would be 100 percent possible, are given an almost infinite amount of aids or values: job, salary, prestige, family planning, and dreams. The latter brings us to the topic of this article. We all still remember our childhoods and our detailed wishlists that we always handed to our parents at Christmas, certain that they gave it directly to Santa Claus. This list still exists in our heads, but it is no longer fixed on a certain day, but rather, as sad as it sounds, on the rest of our lives: the bucket list.
Admittedly, this term is a bit negative, because a list of all the things you want to experience before you die poses difficult questions for many people. Still, let’s be positive; there is an almost extravagant amount of time to experience something. But it is also common practice to create this list without realizing it. True to the saying: It is nice to have goals in life. It is our opinion that as long as you don’t put yourself under pressure, everyone should have a bucket list. It is simply worth living for the beautiful things in life.
Fast cars, the Himalayas and, oh yeah, kiss the most beautiful girl in the world
The beauty of the bucket list: No one can discourage you. There is absolutely nothing to shake you—no right, no wrong, and no second opinion. You don’t have to know your goals in life, but everyone has desires, and the sum of all desires is the list you have to work through. But what goes on such a list?
A wonderful example of a bucket list comes from the movie The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, in which the two aging, and terminally ill, men create their own list, which, besides tangible destinations, also contains many life metaphors. Here is an excerpt from the list:
- go parachuting
- drive a Shelby Mustang
- see the pyramids and the Taj Mahal
- go big-game hunting
- experience something “majestic”
- do something good for a stranger
- laugh so hard you cry
- kiss the most beautiful girl in the world
The essential things are what count
The film shows in a sadly beautiful way that only a few of us can achieve all our goals in life. It is also a recollection of the essential, of what really counts in life. It is the people around us who breathe meaning into a bucket list. Of course, loneliness can also be fulfilling, but we are rather gregarious animals who want to share our most beautiful experiences with loved ones and experience them together. For this reason we have created a lightbox full of potential, Bucket List Moments, where even some of the photographers could make a check on their list.
