Life List

"Climb every mountain," the song says. But what if you don't want to climb every one and the ones you do want to climb are more medium-sized?

“Life Lists” are all the rage these days. People are making master lists of all the things they must see, do, and experience in a lifetime. To be honest I’m a bit ambivalent about these life lists, at least for me. For one thing, I guess, I feel like I’m not missing too much in the life I’m living right now. Perhaps I’m setting my sights too low or something, but I feel like there’s not much I could imagine adding. Simultaneously, when you feel like your life is already a pretty amazing adventure, there’s something that seems a bit overwhelming about a life list—gosh, how much more am I supposed to do! And my life is already so full! How am I ever going to find the time?

Nonetheless, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, yes, there are a few things that I’d put on a life list of my own. I decided that my life list would be limited to things I feel I can reasonably accomplish (I’m all for dreaming big, but I don’t want to put undue pressure on my life with dreams like playing onstage with U2 and other wild fantasies). And while I also want my list to be more than just an exercise in wishful thinking, I also want it to be less than a to-do list where I feel like my life will have been some how less than extraordinary if I don’t get to do them all. Like Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life I want my life to be full and meaningful even if I don’t get to “do and see it all.”

So, enough caveats; here’s the list:

Places to visit
Israel
Kenya
Egypt
India
New Zealand
China
Brazil
Trinidad & Tobago
Italy
Spain
Ireland
Great Britain
Prague
New York City
The American Southwest
The Grand Canyon

Places to go back to
Paris
Austria
Thailand
San Francisco

Places I’d like to live (Just about everywhere I’ve visited, I could see myself living but here are four places that especially come to mind)
Japan
Teach English for two years in Korea
Somewhere in South America
Hawaii (If I had to live in the USA this would be my first choice)

Things to do
Do a road trip across America with my best friend J Carlos
Take a massage course
Learn to dance with my wife
Run a marathon
Complete a triathalon
Climb a mountain (a fairly normal one. Everest level stuff doesn’t interest me)
Write a book & have it made into a film

See U2 in concert (again)


Books to Read
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

I’m sure I’ll add more items to the list. . .and who knows I might even take an item off if I realize I don’t care about it so much. Life is much more than a list, it is an adventure to be lived every single day.