We all have a bucket list, a roster of things that we would like to do, places we would like to visit, artists we would like to hear and experiences we would like to have before we “kick the bucket”, that is, we die. What do you want to live and achieve before the final hour?
We have all seen that movie or read that story. Our main character is depressed, alienated, distant, hurt. She goes to the doctor, and she is informed in a dispassionate and formal way that she only has 6 months to live.
She breaks down in denial, but somewhere between the tears and the pain she finds the strength and the drive to make those final months count. She comes to terms with her own mortality and the quest begins. To right the wrongs, to change course, to say the unsaid and forgive the unforgiven. To take risks and make decisions, to open her heart and love.
The story may have a million different endings and infinite variations, but we still can relate to it. We can relate to the urgency to live, to the need to experience personal and unique adventures that are our own. In that sense, death reminds us of how precious and brief our lives are, and how little time we have here. Death makes life better.
If this was your story, how would you like it to be? If you had to make a list of the things that you haven’t done yet but that you would like to check before you are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80, before you are in a bed and can’t move freely, before you lose your mind to senility and Alzheimer, before you finally stop breathing and lose those 21 grams that separate a living body form a human corpse, how long would it be? What would you include? Come and tell us!
