A Pocketful of Dreams: Confessions of a Reluctant Bucket Lister
In my family, there has been a long-standing lore about my mother’s “List.” Until recently, I had never seen the list with my own two eyes, but it had its own formidable reputation. We, being her four children, all believed her when she’d say, “Well, I put it on the list,” as she referenced one accomplishment or another she had put a check beside. When I was in college, I loved telling my friends about my mother, what a badass she was, and about The List. Who makes a life list and then systematically checks items off? For real? I mean, she literally had a typed-up list with penciled check-marks beside the items she had turned from dreams into reality. And these were no small tasks—they were things like earning a PhD, writing a book, and restoring an old house.
At the end of my mother’s life, I finally asked her to see the list. Most of the significant moments I spent with her in the last months of her life were in the wee hours of the night. Daytime was usually a bustle of visitors, hospice nurses in and out, and not generally conducive to deep, meaningful conversation. It was often late at night that she would ask me for a chat. With her husband fast asleep in the other room and none of her friends or my siblings around, I relished having her all to myself.
One night, I asked her about the list. She sent me to look for it in her office, and to my awe-struck delight, I found it. I remember that moment of holding the yellowed pages in my hand, like holding a window into time—into her heart. At my mother’s insistence, my parents had created this life goal list on my mom’s typewriter as they were getting ready to marry in 1972. There are three pages: The first is her personal list, then my dad’s, then a shared list of goals. Several years later, she would write her dissertation on the same typewriter. While managing a daytime job and her four young children, she spent hours in the attic typing away, burning the midnight oil to accomplish one of her many goals: earning her doctorate in family sciences and human sexuality. For a country girl whose mother made it as far as high school and whose father was illiterate, this was a monumental accomplishment.
I stood hunched over the filing cabinet in her office that night, holding the list reverently in my hands, a few tears threatening to spill from my eyes. I wiped them and decided they could wait—there would be so much time for tears once she was gone. For now, she was alive and impatiently asking me from the other room if I had found the list. Standing beside her hospice bed, contorting myself to lean over the rails towards her face so we could look at the paper together, we began talking about the time in her life when she had created it. She told me how dashingly handsome and adventurous my father had been, how they dreamed together and were aligned in what they wanted out of life. As I looked over the typed-up dreams in the weak light slanting in from the hallway, I saw a life carefully thought out. Were bucket lists a trend in the 1970s, or had this just been her particular way of dreaming and living? Like so many things, my mother was ahead of her time and paving the way for a life without bounds. (The answer is no, “bucket list” was not a term in the 1970s. It is reported to have been coined by screenwriter Justin Zackham in 1999 and then massively popularized by the 2007 movie “The Bucket List.”)
Our chatting trailed off as she grew too tired to continue. I never got the chance to ask how she used her list as a compass to navigate toward the woman she became and the life she built. For now, it was finally time for sleep. I settled into the guest room, tucked beneath the canopy bed among lace pillows and toile curtains, surrounded by oil paintings of the French countryside.
I lay there, wrapped in a sanctuary of the known, a cocoon where every object felt like a piece of my own history. There was a profound, settled peace in being among her curated treasures, knowing her breathing body was just a few steps away. In that moment, I realized this was the only place I would ever feel this specific anchorage—the soul-deep solace that exists only within my mother’s sphere. This feeling will end with her death, I thought, and I lay awake for a long time, trying to imprint the sensation of this solace—clinging to it and letting go of the list or any thoughts about life goals.
It took me a couple of years after her death to sit down and write out my own bucket list. I had been so entranced with hers, it was perplexing to me that I didn’t immediately start my own, or, for that matter, that I had not already created one. It was not a classic case of fear of commitment—if you know me, you know this much is true! I admired more than just my mom’s ability to dream up a life that she truly desired; it was the way she steadfastly worked towards her aspirations that garnered my deepest admiration and awe. In my blog post Junkyard Roses, the most powerful moment is when I see her not merely as a dreamer, but as someone who turned her dreams into reality. Many of us can dream, but few know how to turn mirage-like aspirations into tangible action. I still don’t know what the block to making my own list was, but I suspect the trendiness of making a bucket list felt disingenuous. Like so many fads, it would become another item shoved in a drawer—my life’s aspirations a crumpled and forgotten “treasure” that gets none of my attention or focus. That reeks of phony living, which I want nothing to do with. Still, my confusion lingered, and from time to time, I would catch myself thinking about the paradox of admiring my mom’s ambitions but not engaging in my own process of dreaming and doing.
It was just this year, after attending an impactful week-long women’s retreat abroad, that I finally felt pulled to create my own list. Being on retreat unlocked something in me, and I no longer felt blocked in many parts of my life—including this part. Perhaps it was the immersive state of authenticity the retreat provided that allowed me to engage in the process not as part of a trend, but as myself. Coincidentally, when I returned from the retreat, my husband was working on his own 100-tem bucket list. Seriously? One hundred items! The notion was so silly that I rebelliously wanted to try it.
I was able to complete a list of forty-two aspirations.
So there. I had finally done what my mother had done. Made my list.
Now what?
I truly didn’t know if I was supposed to feel some grounding force now that I had put my dreams, no matter how small or large, into writing. My smallest goal: learn to chop wood. (I am timid when it comes to swinging axes, but it’s a quintessential slow activity with which I am enamored.) My biggest goal: write a book.
But what does it mean now that I have written down my goals? As a psychotherapist, I felt as though I shouldn’t even be asking this question! Isn’t this what I do for a living? Help people define their goals and then create plans to achieve them? The answer to that question is yes, that is what I do. But creating a bucket list is not the same as creating an action plan or a strategy. It is just a list of cravings, callings, curiosities, dreams, and aspirations. It doesn’t include any next steps.
Now, I had a list and a lot more questions. What do other people do with their lists? Revisit them often? Number them off, starting with the ones they want to tackle first? Choose one or two a year to work towards? Stick them in a drawer and occasionally see if they have anything to put a check beside? What the heck was I supposed to do with this thing?!
Several times after creating my list, I pulled out my journal and looked it over. Yup. That is my list… Then I closed my journal and put it away. Nothing. Nothing was happening.
Recently, exactly ten months after creating my list, I looked it over with my oldest daughter as we sat journaling and reflecting on the year behind us and the new year ahead. She is just as enamored of mom’s audacious accomplishments. I noted that three items are on their way to becoming a reality. I have completed a fourth item and can put a check beside it. Just like that, something is happening.
I finally realized that by creating the list, I planted seeds in my subconscious. They live there, buried below the surface, slowly growing, guiding my actions and choices from the depths of my being. I don’t have a strategic plan for executing these things. They have a way of weaving themselves in when the timing is right and ripe for the picking. It is as though I have stuffed them all in my pockets, and from time to time, when I reach in, I pull out just the right one. And it is then that I make a plan, book a plane ticket, write a new idea out on paper, or sign up for a class. For so many years, I appreciated my mother’s tenacity and grit. Her whole life, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do if she set her sights on it. I have wanted to follow her lead, dream big, and then live big.
In the end, I may have been looking for a recipe or instructions for what to do with the list once it was compiled—something my mother rarely needed. She didn’t wait on anything or follow many rules. She had an idea, believed in herself, and jumped. Perhaps one of our differences is that I am slightly more paced and measured in my actions. I am still waiting for the day I recruit a trusted friend to help me gain the courage to swing a sharp object dangerously close to my feet and chop firewood. I will keep you posted.
I do have one dream that I can’t check off, and that is to show my mother my list and share this story of how I finally created it. But then again, she probably knows, because I have the feeling she put it all in my pocket to begin with.
Instructions (Sort of) for Creating Your Lifetime Bucket List:
When you want to tap into your deepest longings, or even the seemingly smallest and silliest ones, you need spaciousness. The first step is to set up your environment for thoughtful reflection.
Set Up Your Environment:
Get comfortable; cozy up with blankets, calming music, a warm drink, a crackling fire, or a flickering candle.
Create your list in a place you can find and easily revisit: a journal, a piece of paper in a designated folder, or a file on your computer. If you have a vintage typewriter, that would be a really cool way to use it!
It Is About Brainstorming
Creating your list is about brainstorming more than anything, so start dreaming—and dream big, baby! If, after a dozen or so ideas, you feel stalled, try going more granular on each of the items and extrapolate them further. I have compiled questions to get your juices flowing and help springboard you into your most wild and wonderful aspirations.
Pro Tip (from your favorite psychotherapist—yes, I do indeed have the skills to help you with this). Be specific instead of broad in your descriptions. If you write “Travel,” that is too broad. Make it very, very specific. Under the category of travel, you might write, “Go on a trip to the Lake District in Southwest England and visit Beatrix Potter’s home,” or “Go to Paris and eat in the oldest restaurant still in operation.”
Once your list is compiled, sit back and let it all percolate. Then, from time to time, check your pockets.
Juicy Questions to Get You Started
What is the wildest thing you have ever wanted to experience?
The most far-fetched?
What is the smallest thing you would like to do, learn, achieve, or are curious about?
Who are the people you might like to do some of these things with? (Name the activity and the person.)
Who are your mentors—what did they do, teach, or share that you want to emulate?
What does your heart long for?
What does your brain crave knowing more about?
What did you do as a child that you want to do more of as an adult?
What is the reason you were put on this earth—and how can you share it?
What scares you, but you want to do it anyway?
What quirky, weird thing do you simply have to include on this list?!
What is the slowest-growing dream you have?
The fastest-growing?
What dream includes a group?
What dream is only accomplished solo?
What do you want to build, make, or craft?
What oceans, rivers or lakes do you want to swim in?
What do you want to have done to you or for you? (This refers to things like a psychic reading or Reiki treatment, or a blessing from a religious figure.)
What festival do you want to attend? How many times?
Who do you want to reunite with, see one more time, or apologize to?
What special or meaningful place from childhood do you want to revisit?
What cultural experience do you want to participate in?
What culinary or gastronomic aspirations do you have?
Is there a habit or practice you would like to develop, like gratitude or some other form of mindfulness?
Do you have financial aspirations?
What is the one of the most meaningful things you hope to experience with your children?
If you could leave one written legacy for your family, what would it be: a personal memoir, a collection of poetry, or a detailed family tree and history?
Is there something you want to produce, make, create, or achieve professionally? (Degree, certificate, rank, or position.)
Are there geographic places you want to visit? What, in particular, do you want to experience there?
Where do you want to volunteer?
What book do you want to read before you die?
What wonders of the nature-made or man-made world do you want to see?
What sport do you want to try at least once in your life?
Are there cultures or religions you want to explore?
What is the most unrealistic dream you have?
Enjoy the slow- Heather