My toes curl up when people talk about bucket lists.
I’m sorry, I know I’m a horrible person, but I just find it hard to get on board with the whole bucket list concept.
I was kind of surprised when I browsed my archives to realise I have been thinking this way for a long time, since at least back in 2012 when I blogged about my reverse bucket list – which basically reminds us of the wonderful experiences we’ve had rather than focusing on what we haven’t yet achieved.
It came up again during a conversation with a travel writer friend, Carolyn Beasley, last week. She’s a good friend, the type you can have a spirited discussion with, and over email she told me this:
Why does the term ‘bucket list’ have to be such a negative? I feel like it has been ‘cancelled’ unfairly … for instance, my bucket list contains simply some things I’d like to do. And they are all sustainable. Like spending a month in a village in France just eating baguettes and drinking local wine. And hiking the Wukalina Walk in Tasmania. So I think we should, rather than object to the term itself, perhaps pay more attention to what is actually ON the list.
Carolyn made me stop and think. She doesn’t sound wrong. But is she right?
Why I don’t like bucket lists
Way back a decade ago I wrote that the idea of having a long list of things I must do before I died felt overwhelming, but that’s only the start of the issue. What bothers me the most is that travel bucket lists seem to encourage “list ticking”: Been to Rome? Tick. Eaten a bagel in New York? Tick. Seen the Eiffel Tower/Mona Lisa/Leaning Tower of Pisa? Tick, tick, tick. Travelling to tick things off a list seems the opposite of thoughtful travel, and can get people focused on achieving these goals regardless of what else presents itself, rather than leaning in to whatever happens in the moment, and letting the world come to you.
Bucket lists also tend to feature the most well-known places because, quite simply, many of us don’t know what else is out there. There probably aren’t many people who have “visit an almost uninhabited island of Estonia and watch a church choir rehearse” on their bucket list, because who would even think that up, but doing so is one of my favourite ever travel experiences.
I also worry that many people add destinations or experiences to their bucket lists for the wrong reasons. Visiting some specific spot in Norway where people take crazy cliff-top pictures just because you’ve seen it a hundred times on Instagram doesn’t seem a good reason to go somewhere, to me, for example. And bucket lists really increase the expectations people might have when they travel, rather than just being open to whatever comes.
How can we improve bucket lists?
So if Carolyn is right and a bucket list is fine as long as you’re picking quality ideas for it, how can we make a bucket list that I might approve of? (Haha … not that it matters whether I approve of your bucket list or not, but still …)
It made me think about the closest thing I have to a bucket list, which is a swirling mob of ideas about things I might like to do, depending on what opportunities arise. For example, I’d love to ride the Trans-Siberian across Russia non-stop for the week (I’ve been lucky already to spend a couple of weeks on it, hopping on and off, but have this idea that I’d like to really immerse in the non-stop version). I want to return to Japan, and discover more of the bits I haven’t yet found during my two years of living there and multiple return trips. I’d like to spend some extended time living abroad again, though I really don’t mind where – I love just leaving that up to fate and being guided by some good (probably quite random) reason to choose a place that crops up at the moment the decision needs to be made.
I guess, reflecting on what my “kind of bucket list” includes, my main criteria are that a bucket list needs to be very tailored to your own special taste in experiences, and it must be non-prescriptive and open to plenty of variation. Carolyn’s baguette-binging month in France fits this. And then there are some experiences that are more specific but are really close to your heart – Carolyn wanting to do the Wukalina Walk makes perfect sense to me, and I’m sure she’d agree that my Trans-Siberian daydream is on brand for me. I think on my deathbed I don’t want to have regrets of not having done a bunch of specific things I’d wanted to do, but instead to be reflecting on all the incredible experiences travel has brought me.
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