My New Year’s Resolution: Ditch my Bucket List for a Chuck-It List

It’s Andy here today. Ann is over in OurLittleCorner ditching our black plastic utensils and making a grandiose grandson-inspired New Year’s resolution, among other things.

My New Year’s resolution this year is to ditch my bucket list. This shouldn’t be hard for me because I don’t have such a list. Evidently, lots of people have bucket lists. One study I came across found that about 91 percent of American adults claim to have a bucket list – most of which involves some sort of travel.

Being a member of that 9 percent minority is worrisome. Am I less of a person because I have no burning desire to travel to Hawaii to see the Kīlauea Volcano, or to Nepal for paragliding, or to the desert to attend Burning Man ? Is my satisfaction with the predictable and routine patterns of my current life something to worry about? Or is it that I’m just getting old and beyond needing adventure and novelty for fulfillment?

I had never given the issue of bucket lists much thought until our friend David from Albuquerque sent me a link to a Washington Post opinion piece “Why you should swap your bucket list with a chuck-it list.” The author, Valerie Tiberius, is a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, so I assume she knows more than I about the underlying epistemological and ontological implications of bucket lists (I’m not even sure I know what “epistemological” or “ontological” means).

Tiberius suggests that while bucket lists can have life goals that are “fun” and “inspirational” which prod us to pursue fresh and new experiences, they also can be “oppressive, irritating reminders” of things that are beyond our reach because of limited resources or advanced age. This, she says, can leave us on a “treadmill of desire and frustration.”

Philosophers aren’t the only ones concerned about the possible pitfalls of bucket lists. Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College, recently wrote an article for The Atlantic entitled “Quit Your Bucket List.” Friedman argues that the popularity of bucket lists may be an artifact of the common misconception that “people who don’t have a taste for the newest, sexiest experience are dull, incurious, and unimaginative.” This misconception persists despite some solid evidence that humans intrinsically prefer things and people they are familiar with. Similar to Tiberius’s stance, Friedman argues that a bucket list that prods an endless search for the unfamiliar inevitably leads to disappointment.

Even if we in the non-bucket-list minority understand that it’s okay to be bucket-list free, we still must interact with those in the bucket-list majority. That means we should have a socially acceptable response should anyone from the bucket-list majority ask about our bucket list. So , to avoid being caught flat-footed and list-less (and risk being labeled “dull, incurious, and unimaginative“), I would suggest we follow Tiberius’s advice and create a “chuck-it list” detailing those things we do not plan to do. As she points out, “when you age, you grow into a different person with new priorities… Give yourself permission to remove those items you’ll probably never get to. And most important: Don’t feel so bad about it.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, in a 2011 article in The Atlantic, offers a good example of a “chuck-it list.” He calls it a “reverse bucket list” but it’s essentially the same idea as a chuck-it list. So, as a contribution to all of you 9-percenters out there I am posting a chuck-it list I created that can be used as a model for crafting your own personal list. You’ll be surprised at how liberating this can be.

Twenty things I plan never to do before I die:

1. Give up doing puns at dinner parties
2. Take up yoga
3. Sing “I Did It My Way” (or any song) in a karaoke bar
4. Cull the 24,666 photos and 1,028 videos currently stored on my computer (real numbers by the way)
5. Jump from an airplane (with or without a parachute)
6. Travel to Cuba (or anywhere) to learn how to salsa dance
7. Be able to identify all of the electronic options in our new Kia
8. Be able to identify all of the functions on my Apple watch
9. Put my hair up in a man bun
10. Attend The Barber of Seville (or any opera where there’s singing)
11. Drop about $1,000 per couple at The French Laundry (including wine)
12. Drop about $10 – $15 per couple at a McDonalds (including drinks)
13. Take up hard hat deep-sea diving
14. Rediscover myself through self-transcending meditation
15. Travel to Denmark for a sauna and cold plunge
16. Clear my negative energy by burning palo santo
17. Participate in the Mardi Gras Elvis-look-alike parade in the French Quarter
18. Do a bungee jump off the rim of the Grand Canyon
19. Travel to Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, for authentic possum stew
20. Create a bucket list

Because this is a food blog (of sorts) I thought it would be appropriate to conclude with a recipe inspired by my chuck-it list. In that neither Ann nor I intend to ever make this dish, it will be up to you to decide if you want to add it to your bucket-list or to chuck it.