It seems that everybody today talks about two things; Pumpkin-spiced lattes, and bucket lists. As you sip your pumpkin-spiced latte right now while reading this, you may have already imagined a few things on your bucket list that you’d like to get around to doing one day or another. As for today, however, today has enough concerns of its own. For instance, you’re currently drawing your last sips of your latte and you’re thinking how far you’ll need to walk to get to your next pumpkin/caffeine fix.

While there are many bucket list examples you can find online, you have your own unique tastes, and your own unique desires. On your bucket list, you might have listed;

  • Stainless steel
  • Good handle
  • Without holes
  • Sturdy design

I believe, you my friend, might have the wrong idea about what is a bucket list. Did you know it’s not all about actual buckets? Allow me to educate you. It comes from the term “to kick the bucket” and so to have a bucket list is to make a list of things that you’d like to do before you “kick the bucket”. You make a list of things you’d like to accomplish in your life, experiences you’d like to have, places you’d like to visit, skills you’d like to acquire and so on. They might be lifelong goals, or just funny bucket list ideas. The idea isn’t new at all, but the name has become the trend. In fact, the ancients would use the Latin term, “Memento Mori”, which translates to “remember death”. The idea being that you consciously remember that you will die one day, and to live your life while you still have it. But the term “bucket list” rolls off the tongue better, and so it stuck.

You can search online for bucket list items, and you can come across distant lands you’d like to visit, monuments you’d like to stand before, sacred grounds you’d like to observe, festivals you want to be a part of. But the best parts of any bucket list are the experiences you can put add. Anything from running with the bulls in Pamplona or something more home grown, like hang gliding, learning to surf, stunt driving or indulging yourself with something extravagant. The possibilities are endless, but they are yours to choose.

And the idea of the list now is to start to achieve them. Have an actual list somewhere that you can see it, and you can start to plan your next item to cross off the list. What’s the point of creating all these enormous dreams and goals and leaving them undone? You can start by researching some of the items you can do in and around where you live and begin planning on when you’ll take on that next adventure and start living your life.

So, throw away those buckets you’ve been collecting, and start living. Take interest in living your life and ask yourself the question, “What will I do before I kick the bucket?”