Make A Daily Bucket List
An ordinary twist towards a life worth living for.
Bucket Lists tend to involve either traveling or adventures, typically both. On bucketlist.org, the thousands of potential ideas span from diving the Great Barrier Reef to having an all-nighter in Vegas — with everything else in between.
What compels people to create a Bucket List?
Taking a look at popular culture, MTV produced two seasons of the “The Buried Life”, a series featuring four men fed up with their daily routine pursuing 100 things they want to do before they die. Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson starred in a movie called the “The Bucket List” as two elderly men who meet in a hospital room and then leave to go on a life adventure. Netflix’s latest movie “The F**k-It List” features a genius high schooler that conformed too much to his parent’s expectations and never embraced what he wanted to do.
A feeling of discontent or unhappiness is usually associated with the creation of the Bucket List. It mostly stems from people that followed the standard path. They find themselves trading time for money, tied to a specific location with few chances of going on an adventure without previously scheduled vacation time.
But, death doesn’t wait for our supervisor’s approval. If I died tomorrow, would I be satisfied?
I thought I needed a certain level of success to be happy and content. For example, a Bucket List item for me has been to have a New York Times bestseller. Yet, this is something that may never happen regardless of how much fulfillment I get from writing or the quality of my work. By giving the New York Times the power of acknowledgement, I make the ability for internal peace conditional on an external source.
In addition, the chances of me waking up tomorrow and becoming a New York Times bestseller overnight is zero. I could easily die tomorrow without this external validation. What would make me fulfilled today?
A Daily Bucket List.
I’ve been writing every day for a month and it’s making me giddy. For years, I went without writing a single word outside of text and email. My pages remained blank despite being overwhelmed by how much I love to write. Now, I feel like I could die tomorrow and be plenty fulfilled. Not fulfilled because of external recognition, but because I know that I’m taking the time to do what’s important to me every day.
We have a duty to prioritize our own conditions for happiness and contentment, minimizing our reliance on external outcomes. To fulfill my dream as a writer, I don’t have to wait for the New York Times or until I visit a bunch of French cafes. My dream of being a writer is fulfilled by writing everyday. This is what optimizes my daily fulfillment.
“Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself […] the reward is self-respect.” — Robert Heinlein
