In Which Bucket Lists are a weird concept, sort of.

Everyone who has ever been alive, I bet, has at some point said to themselves "gosh, isn't it funny the way sometimes time seems to pass quickly, and at other times very slowly?" Or, you know, a culturally and liguistically appropriate equivalent. Everyone notices it, and every 2-bit philosopher or self-help vox-popper has a word of advice about it. You'de think we'd have cracked it by now, and yet somehow they all seem strangely unsatisfactory.

Variants on the "Live every day like it's your last" theme are dreadfully popular, but honestly, that can hardly work out. We'd spend the rest of our lives (even if we thought of them in 24 hour increments) thinking things like "Damn! We've run out of toilet paper!" and "Why do I never have any clean socks?" and so on, because no-one wants to do boring chores on their last day alive. More than we already do, I mean. I for one am always running out of socks even as it is.

The best of these variations is, in my opinion, the one in that William Shatner song: "live life like you're going to die, because you're going to". This has the value of blunt accuracy, which really is delightfully refreshing, I've always thought. Still, what does that actually entail? Getting on with the To Do Before You Die list? Everyone always seems to include a number of strangely unpleasant things on those lists. What if you honestly don't want, even slightly, even secretly, even deep down, to ever go bungee jumping at all? What else other than one-shot extreme sports and visiting far-off foreign lands even goes on a list like that?

I am suspicious of anyone who has a fully formulated list of things that they want to do before they die. What if what they want changes? Are they allowed to decide that they don't actually want to go skydiving after all? Are they saving up to do those specific things all the time? What if the things you want to do before you die are less tickable, can't be acheived in an afternoon, or rely on luck? Do people have "live a long happy life with someone I love and who loves me" on their list? Is that sort of thing allowed?

Also, I for one would be very wary of starting a list like that for other reasons. Suddenly fun adventures become Tasks To Do, not fun adventures. You could be considered to be procrastinating about them, which only lumps "Dance in the rain" in with "get that tax report in before the end of financial year"; on the same level of stress. And wouldn't a list like this only encourage dissatisfaction and disaffection in our quotidian rhythms and pleasant daily lives? Could you really enjoy a breakfast of delicious but standard toast, on a perfectly average Wednesday morning, with "Why aren't you off seeing the North Pole?" hanging over your head?

Plus, and this is even more crucial, what do you do when you finish your list? Are you done, have you got nothing left to look forward to in life? Or will you add other things to it? Doesn't it seem like adding things to the end of a completed list trivialises your acheivement and makes all the effort you went to to Live For A Year In Asia (or whatever) seem futile, like a hamster on a wheel? Or will you never complete the list, but constantly grow it as new ambitions strike you? This last one sounds fine until you realise that it makes the entire thing pointless from the start. If you don't plan to do them all before you die, why the hell are they even on your List? Is your last thought, in this scenario, going to be, as you lie there dying a peaceful death at age 90, surrounded by your loving family, "Bugger, I didn't even get to swim naked in the Mediterranean by moonlight"? I really really hope that my last thought in life is not one of regret and chagrin.

Regret is somehow an even stranger topic for the writers of the sort of quotes which people will insist on putting onto kitsch fridge magnets. It is the deeply cherished belief of these poeple that you only regret the things you don't do, rarely the things you do do. The only really convincing arguement I ever saw for this point of view was this xkcd comic:



And that's a pretty specific case. I put it to you that the people being quoted here have demostrably failed to take their own advice. Anyone who thinks you never really regret doing things has clearly not done enough foolish and regretable things. I mean, I'm a total square, (no, really), and I haven't done many very exciting or dangerous things; I don't take drugs or smoke or engage in any really particularly reckless behaviours, and even I regret more things I have done than things I haven't. I feel that often I have legitimately tried to do the things I regret not succeeding at, anyway. I feel like I don't know or talk to anough people in my course, and so I gritted my teeth and fair-and-square signed up to learn salsa with them. It didn't work, since apparently so did every other girl in the course, and maybe all of 17 guys, but I gave it a legit shot, so I don't feel the need to beat myself up about it. I sort of regret that I never became a teen star sensation or something (I mean Elijah Wood had already signed up for LOTR when he was 18. I've never been in any movies, let alone record-breaking, blockbusting trilogies which instantly become a major part of the public consciousness) but it's not like that's something I ever actually wanted to do.

I think, in fact, that mainly the things I regret are things I've said. I talk too fast and too much and too often, so I regret a lot of things I've said before thinking. Or at any rate, I have regretted a lot of those things. Frankly, I say instantly regrettable things so often that the sheer volume of them makes it difficult to regret many of them for long.

Back to the kissing graph: you know, the more I think about it, the more silly it seems. Of course you regret not kissing him/her. You never found out how that would've turned out, so in your mind it's Cinderella endings and happily ever after. You don't deal with the possible bad outcomes, so you're free to regret at leisure,happy in the belief that you threw away a perfect future, that that would have been a perfect future. I've had a lot of crushes in my time (a lot) and I've probably wanted to kiss more people than I even remember wanting to kiss, but I don't regret not kissing them. (Maybe I regret that they didn't kiss me, but this is hardly a legitimate regret. That's for them to regret.) Conversely, I did once, long ago, kiss someone I had a crush on and (on the cheek) and it was the most awkward thing ever (despite the cheek-ness! Imagine if it had been a proper kiss! it would have been unbearably mortifying), and I regretted that like anything.

Seriously, who are these people walking around going "if I were to kiss a person we would instantly have a fulfulling romantic experience, because I am just that good, but instead, despite this firm belief, I will not kiss people, but will rather refrain and then tell the internet about how I regret my choices"? Apparently there are more than ten thousand of them!

I was going to write this whole thing about how it would be awesome if you could sell the days of your life that you've totally wasted to old people who would treasure it more (I mean seriously, I don't need today, I barely even took any notes, all I did was fall asleep in lectures and on buses and alternate between being excited and disappointed about dancing, some little old lady who wants to spend just one more day with her grandchildren or whatever could totally have it) but then I realised 3 things: firstly that it's very late, secondly that I've written an awful lot, and thirdly that that is essentially the whole basis of capitalist economy and paid labour. So, having invented the industrial revolution and reframed your boring work day as an opportunity for young-you-now to sell a day of life to old-you-in-the-future (who'll need those wages and savings to buy bingo chips and sherry and so on) (you're welcome), I am going to bed.

After all, although, as Douglas Adams said: "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so", bedtime remains the sort of illusion that I really ought to pay some attention to.