A few years ago, based on a movie of the same name, the idea of creating a “bucket list” became popular. What would you still like to do in your life? Travel, start a new business, grow a garden, write a book or a song? The possibilities are endless, of course.
My husband and I don’t have a bucket list. I think getting through each day was so all-consuming that it left us no energy to imagine a someday where we would have time, energy and/or finances to indulge in such fantasies. Or, maybe we don’t have much imagination. Or, maybe we were just content in the moment. More honestly, all of the above are true, given any day.
A factor that restricts me from such imaginings is fear. I’m not a risk-taker. I want to get it right, the first time. I want to master whatever it is I’m doing – even if that’s having fun. I wish I were a Bon vivant, someone who would jet off to Spain just because I’d never been or go bungee jumping or parasailing. I imagine I’m that kind of person, but I am not. I don’t dive into swimming pools, I ease into them over by the kiddie steps.
That fear not only keeps me from experiencing many new things in life, it keeps me from even trying to do many things. Shall I write that book I have in mind? Start my own crafts company? Go on that mission trip? No, no, better not. The book may not be any good and perhaps no one will want any of the things I make and God knows what could happen on a mission trip. Do you recognize the tape I play in my mind?
I hate it. I really do. It has kept me from so much in life, and now as I am at this mid-stage (or slightly more so) of life, I want even more to jump, to dive, to dig in. Will I? Can I? Yes, I might fail, but I will have learned something in the failing that I had not known before. Or I might appear foolish to my friends, but surely fools have more fun than fuddy-duddies! Or I may risk some hard-earned money in an investment – in me! – that we don’t get back. Well, there are so many things that might go wrong, aren’t there?
But there are so many things that might go right, too.
In my youth, we lived in a two-story farm house in Missouri. My bedroom was upstairs and a landing separated the two flights of stairs. One day, I stood on that landing looking at the 12 steps down to the main floor and I jumped, believing as I often did at that young age that I could do anything – even fly! And I did fly, a few brief seconds before my forehead crashed into the top of the doorjamb of the door that enclosed the stairwell. It knocked me out and I fell in a crumpled heap across the bottom step. I still have the ridge in my hairline to prove it.
My mother was not happy about my flights – of fancy or reality. After it was assured I would live and would not be paralyzed, she scolded me roundly, asking me what in the world had I been thinking to try such a foolish thing.
I can still tell you what I was thinking. That it was possible. That I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try it. That it might work. That it would be the most wonderful and amazing thing if it did work. That’s what I was thinking.
And just between you and me, I’m still thinking it.
Simply Yours 