Bucket List, Shmucket List

Ever since reading this beautiful article written by Amanda Orr, my whole perspective on the "bucket list" has changed:  

"Soon, people from the state's early intervention team came to evaluate my baby. She couldn't do anything -- push up, reach for things, or roll over. So, they said, it was time to write a list -- a list of goals for my daughter. What would I like her to accomplish, they asked. I sat silently as a montage of all the things I hoped for my daughter scrolled through my head: I wanted her to smile, to talk, to ride a bike, to make a friend, to get married, to have her own daughter. I wanted her to have a life. I was making a bucket list for my daughter -- a list of the most basic, most simple, and most beautiful experiences you can have in life. Nothing on my countless previous lists appeared on my list for her. In fact, I couldn't even remember what was on my lists."

So, to answer the question "My bucket list includes...": nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's empty; or, it's extremely full, depending on how you choose to look at it.

Of course, this wasn't always the case. I spent my college years intent on doing everything before I settled down, as if settling down somehow meant my life was over. At first, I wanted to do everything before I married and had kids. And, then, when my plans changed a bit, and I decided I no longer wanted to be married or have kids -- years that I now refer to as my "extreme avoidance of vulnerability" (thank you Brene Brown!) -- I planned what I would do before I started my career.

Harlaxton Manor, England (Yeah, I lived here for a month. :)

So I studied abroad. I spent part of two summers studying and teaching in Cape Town, South Africa. I spent part of another summer studying Shakespeare and Jane Austen in England, where I drank a lot of absinthe. I partied. I was self-destructive. 

And ya know what? I wouldn't change a thing. All of that travel and study greatly influenced the person I am today. And I know for sure that using part of my twenties to screw up and make bad decisions allows me to be completely content with the life I have now. Been there, done that -- ya know? So I never really feel like I'm missing out on anything. But here is what I know now: life doesn't end when you get married. Or turn thirty. Or have a baby. It doesn't even end when you find yourself unexpectedly pregnant with a baby with special needs.

Earlier this year I had to get my passport renewed, which left me thinking a lot about my twenty year old self, the one who ten years earlier received her passport and planned to spend the next ten years traveling the world, filling its pages before she turned thirty. You know what is so crazy about that? I think I've traveled more since turning thirty, more since having a baby, than I did in my twenties. I mean... I LIVE in the Middle East for crying out loud! And if you would've told me back then that it would be possible to finish a Master's Degree and then make an international move -- all after having a child -- I would've said you were crazy. 

But back to the bucket list. What's Matthew Perry's line in that movie Fools Rush In?: "I have everything that I never knew I always wanted." Yeah, that's my life in a nutshell. It turns out my bucket list has a mind of its own. The things that make my life so rich and so full of joy, the experiences that make my life worth living, are things that were never even on my list. My bucket is overflowing, and I didn't even know it.

 
Linking up with Janine of Janine's Confessions of a Mommyaholic for this "Finish The Sentence Friday." This week's sentence was: My bucket list includes...