Develop a sense of urgency – to pare down that bucket list

I’ve got a list! You might call it a bucket list

Actually it is more than one list- of things I want to do and have. I started it early on in life.

Image by jayneandd via Flickr

There were the things I could do when I grew up; when I graduated; when I got married; became a father. And then the big kahuna of lists; the things I would do when I retired. I still have those lists because I never made everything on those lists happen. All along my life, I believed that there would be time to make them happen. I deferred for various reasons but the biggest was that I always believed I would have the time or money later. I thought that working harder now would make it possible eventually to have them all.

There always seemed to be more time.

It is easy to excuse the failure to check things off the list when you believe that there is still time. Moving from stage to stage in life, it is always the next one where you think you will have the time and the money to make them happen. You fool yourself with the fantasy that tomorrow will be different.. So you move along through the phases of your life, failing at each phase to be the person you want to be and do the things that you want to do. “No problem,” you think. There is always retirement.  And that is where you get the bucket list.

Retirement: the final frontier for lists

Retirement is the final frontier for my lists. Anything I missed doing along the way got moved into my retirement list. Retirement was the elephant’s graveyard for everything I didn’t accomplish in life. So here I am in retirement with the mother of all lists. Some of those tings are now impossible. It’s way to late to spend afternoons helping my sons perfect their Little League pitching style or taking then fishing. I can cross out all the tasks that were time dependent because they are lost opportunities that I can never have. That is certainly one of life’s important lessons that I am learning too late. You have to grab opportunities when circumstances are right because many of the joys in life are offered only once. You can’t defer them. These are the things I wanted to do but now can never have because I missed the opportunity.

Now I need a sense of urgency

Still I still have a long list and the sobering realization that if I don’t attack it with all my energy, there is no next stage of my life to push them into. Retirement is the last lap of life. I can see the finish line from here. Once I cross that line, my list is history. Whatever I check off goes into my memory and legacy. Anything left undone is a puff of smoke.

So today I have a sense of urgency in my retirement. I know that each minute diminishes my remaining time and physical strength. I don’t have a second to waste. I need to study my list daily and attack something. That list must be shorted by the time I cross the finish line, because I can’t take it with me.