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List for Life

• Kim Lenaghan
• 23 Feb 08, 06:58 PM

During the week I went to see the film ‘Bucket List’, which stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as a couple of, not quite, old men facing up to a diagnosis of terminal cancer. A preposterous plot device allows the two of them to share a hospital room, despite the fact that one is a car mechanic/bedside philosopher whilst the other is a cranky, eccentric billionaire – and no prizes for guessing which actor plays which.

Anyway, none of that matters, nor does the fact that this is not a particularly good movie. What is intriguing is the premise from whence comes the title. Faced with their reasonably imminent death the two of them draw up a ‘Bucket List’, that is, things they really want to do or see before the finally kick the bucket. Now that’s an idea that I found fascinating on all sorts of levels.

If I could begin by borrowing a phrase from Mr Benjamin Franklin: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” Amen! We none of us like to dwell on it, but one day we’re all going to be ‘facing of the final curtain’, and whilst we hope that day is still a long way off, we really can’t be certain. People have accidents, get knocked down by buses, get taken suddenly ill, but the difference between us and the characters in the movie is that they had a fair idea of ‘the when’ whilst we’re all living on in blissful ignorance. I say ‘blissful’ because I am pretty certain that most of us, if asked, would not want to know the exact time and date of our deaths – I certainly wouldn’t – but a date with death there will undoubtedly be.

And that is where the bucket list comes in. I reckon, for the reasons I've just mentioned, we should all have one - and not just some vague set of hopes and dreams that we carry around in our heads, this needs to be something that you actually commit to paper. It’s a question of sitting down and writing out a wish list of things you want to do from the sublime to the ridiculous, the serious to the seriously off the wall. And it’s amazing how when it’s there in front of you in black and white it takes on a life of its own. Also, if you’re anything like me, once you have any kind of list you’ll be itching to start crossing things off it.

I’m currently compiling my own list and I’m being very careful about what I put on it. I don’t want something the size of a telephone directory – whilst I’m hopeful I still have a few good years left in me I cannot deny that, in strictly numeric terms, I am hovering around middle age …what a hideous phrase, it should be banned from the English language!

So far on my list I’ve been dealing with the easy things, the fun things – take a trip on the Orient Express, see the Taj Mahal at dawn, have dinner in 3 star Michelin restaurant – preferably with George Clooney, sing in a Paris jazz club, speak fluent French, drink a bottle of wine older than I am…..no doubt you’re getting the idea. so far it’s only at the draft stage, but in the next few weeks I’ll be finalising the definitive The Bucket List – although I see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to amend it or add to it.

So if you share in my philosophy, and you want my advice, don't put this off, start today. Get thinking, get writing and get living….I'm certainly not giving up until this particular fat lady sings! Now, where's my Cole Porter songbook?

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