3 hours ago
12
No, I don’t want to smoke a cigar in Havana. I don’t want to go hot-air ballooning in the Serengeti, nor skydive naked from a microlight plane in Costa Rica. I don’t have a bucket list. And I wish people would stop asking me if I do.
I’m 73 and the co-founder of a social enterprise, Advantages of Age, that challenges the media narrative around ageing. Recently I appeared on a podcast to discuss it. Of course, the host asked me what is on my bucket list. I was horrified. Strangely, for once, I didn’t offer a raft of invectives: I simply said I didn’t have one. But here’s what I really think: the bucket list has blandified adventure. And that is a sin in my book.
A bucket list reminds me in a horrible way of a consumer-led wedding list. And I never got married. Deliberately. It’s not that I don’t have loads of non-commodified, non-cuteified ideas for stuff I’d like to do – yes to another local dance; yes to gallivanting with my grandson and son. I’m a bit of an old hippy travel snob, so yes please to Senegal and Algiers, but you can keep Machu Picchu and soaring above the Grand Canyon in a helicopter. My interests are not part of an intentional pensioner experience. They’re just good fun that I happen to be having in my 70s.
Bucket lists are reductive and aspirational at the same time. On social media, I see bucket-list fever spreading like a virus. The age of the listers is getting disturbingly younger. And now, people have categories: food, play, dating … I just heard one young woman say that she’s going “to draw with chalk” as part of her “summer bucket list”. It will be so “cute” and “therapeutic”, she said. OMG.
These days, you can even go on “the ultimate bucket list journey”, the description of which is so long that you might never actually get around to doing it. There are bucket list journals, guides to the bucket list, guides on to how to use the guides, and therapy to assist you in making your ideal one. Bucket lists are big business.
I’m a fan of the eccentric in life. A little bit of research can lead to having your own adventure rather than someone else’s. The adventure re-hash – no thanks. The idea of having to have an adventure before I “kick the bucket” is heinous to me. I don’t mind about the dying bit, just the terminology.
I like to meander down my own primrose path. That doesn’t mean I don’t get things done; I just like to relish time. That’s why I am making a “fuck it list”. Fuck it to what is expected: I’ll do the opposite.
Oh, and I’m not going to kick the bucket. I’m going to fill it with all those books that have been written about bucket lists and set fire to them.
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Rose Rouse is the editor and co-founder of Advantages of Age, a social enterprise challenging media stereotypes around ageing
