Friday, August 29, 2008

Bucket List

Tonight my dad and I watched The Bucket List. It was a sweet story of two men coming to the end of their lives and deciding to live it up a bit before they die. It was funny, it was tear-jerking, and it made me think of my own life. Sure, I'm only 22 and I have a few years left in me (Lord willing), but I still couldn't help but think about my future.

If I've learned anything in the last few years about how to live life right, it's that I should plan for the future, to live intentionally. My parents taught me that I should be investing in RRSPs as soon as I'm done school. C4C taught me to be intentional in my relationships with others, making sure to consider the spiritual lives of those around me of huge importance. In High School I heard this motivational speaker tell us that the people who make lists while they were young were like 80% more likely to live successful lives, according to the lists they wrote while they were young.

I was skeptical, as a good teenage cynic would be. I wrote the list anyway. It was my secret, written on the walls of my heart. As a 16 year old there were 3 things that were so important to me they made it on my list:
  1. Become bilingual (English & French) by the time I was 25.
  2. Write a novel.
  3. Travel the world.
So far, it's looking pretty promising. I have 3 more years to become fully bilingual and I plan to make it official through the documentation necessary. I'll be pretty upset with myself if I don't do it seeing as I made the goal when I was 16 and I had 9 years to finish it. I wrote a 189 page book in one month when I was 18 (if you've ever wanted to write, you should seriously try this. It's so rewarding..... you'll want quit half the time, so you'll need some pretty good motivation to continue. Seriously fun, though!), and I've travelled a bit of the world.

When it comes to planning ahead, at 16 I think I got a bit of a head start. Soon I will have the ability to save my money and put it towards the things that matter to me. This summer I've been thinking about what it is that matters enough that I should save in the short term for. So tonight when I was watching Edward & Carter go out with a bang I thought I should bring out my list and add to it. I'm not really sure what exactly I'm going to add -- I just have a few ideas:
  1. Become bilingual (English & French) by the time I was 25.
  2. Write a novel.
  3. Travel the world: South Africa, India, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Greece, Israel, France, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Fiji, Haiti, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico.
  4. Skydive.
I will add more as I think of it, but right now I'm going to start saving.

5 comments:

Angelic Engineer said...

It's be cool if we accomplished one of those things together... like travelling.

Unknown said...

let's coordinate our vacations and do it up

when i was 16 i'm pretty sure 'dance in a music video' was on my list.

k, i can't lie, it still kinda is.

(not thaaat kind of video)

Sid S. said...

how about you make one of those countries somewhere that you travel to by, say, next year. around may? :P

Jess Versteeg said...

it highly depends on where I'm assigned for project. My choices were 1) France 2) country of mystery 3) Halifax although there may be a high chance they'll make me go to IBS? Not sure.

Alison Ma said...

yay hong kong! do ittttt. (preferably when i'm there too..)