This morning on my way to work I got to thinking about how life is sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. But cooler.
In the later half of last year, I started reading two blogs: Doniree and Nicole of More is Better. Both ladies have a “life list”–which some of you may know better as a bucket list. On this list, you put down everything you’ve ever wanted to do from the simple and silly to the profound and difficult. I’ve never been much for having such a list because most of the time I look at life as an adventure in which you must grab each moment as it comes. Want to go bungee jumping? Fine, go do it. Quit talking about how one day you hope to get around to it. In the infamous words of Nike, “Just do it.”
However, I realized that despite my approach, sometimes the mundane bits of life get in the way–the daily job, the grocery shopping, the need to just spend a day on the couch with a good movie. And over time, things that I read or saw or heard about and thought “Gosh! I want to do that!” have slipped by the wayside until a few years down the road I remember that once upon a time I was going to conquer the world.
If you straight up asked me what is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, I couldn’t answer you. Life is life and it happens and mine has been pretty cool. But I can’t think on the spot like that. Get me talking though and I’ll tell you about the time I took my pants off in the subway (no relation to the Improv Everywhere stunt), got kicked out of the airport in Casablanca, turned down Keanu Reeves when he asked me to dinner, or joined the Young Republicans for a day at the shooting range (I am a deadly shot).
So, inspired by the aforementioned ladies, I created my own list with things like: learn Italian, go to space camp, climb Machu Picchu, and take up fencing. It is a long long list that I’ve broken out by what I can do locally, state-side, and internationally. And yes, there is even one intergalactic item on my wishlist. You never know, I might have a good 70 years ahead of me in which the space program can finally figure how to let little old moi walk in space. On my walk, I realized how behind I was, this big list and I haven’t tried something new in a few months.
A few years ago, I read a book called Alphabet Weekends in which a friend made a young woman do something new for each letter of the alphabet to get over a bad break-up. I did that, I did something new over the course of a year for each letter–G is for Guasha, this incredible bit of Chinese medicine, K is for Kirov and getting to see the Ballet Company perform. It seems high time to re-institute some guidelines to kick this crossing things off my list into gear.
Anyway, back to the Choose Your Own Adventure. At the end of each chapter, you had two options: do you choose to go down the dark corridor or do you go back to the lobby? Do you talk to the alien or do you shoot it? I don’t know anyone who read one of these books, made their choices, and was done with it. Everyone I knew would either flip ahead to both options to see which results sounded better or would complete their adventure and then go back to the beginning to see what different outcomes would occur.
We don’t get to do any of that in life. We don’t get to see what the outcome of our decisions is going to be or change them after we’ve done them. But we do get to look back. I for one would rather look back and think, “wow, I made some crazy choices, but I lived.” We all die. There is no escaping that fact. And we all die within an average lifespan, never knowing if today is our last. While we cannot predict the future, we can see and enjoy our past–laughing at the stupid choices (like swallowing a goldfish live with a vodka chaser–I still feel bad about that) or the amazing–planning a trip to XX (sorry, it’s a secret and you’ll hear all about it in a few months–flight is already booked).
Just like in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, sometimes a choice would bring us back in a loop and we’d get to read a chapter we thought we had skipped over. One choice causes a chain reaction that leads us to new choices we never conceived of in the first place.
If you choose to just do things rather than waiting and hoping to do them in the future, you won’t have any regrets. Unless you turn Keanu Reeves down for dinner.* Man, what a dolt I was!
*No, seriously, that really happened and I kick myself for that.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve never heard the Keanu Reeves story. How did that happen, exactly? I once got a quote from him at the Matrix Reloaded premiere in London, but that’s as close as I’ve gotten!
I have still not forgiven you for Keanu Reeves!!!
I agree you need to actually do what you dream about doing. So many people put things off ‘for another day’ – what if that day never comes. Take that once in a lifetime and enjoy!!
Oooh, learning Italian sounds fun. I’m Italian, and always wished I grew up learning how to speak it. You should do it.
One of the coolest, and life-changing things I ever did was to read and follow Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. One of the exercises that you do is to brainstorm a list of ‘things I want to do’ from big to small, and do you know, I wrote down a bunch of things, folded it up and didn’t look at it, refer to it, think of it at all. A year later, you should not be surprised that I had done more than half of the things listed. Yay for the power of writing things down. :-) Good luck with all!