Against the Bucket List

I’m trying to organise a trip with the guys, it’s impossible because someone else has already “done” everywhere that gets suggested in the group chat.

Anyway.

I hate the phrase “I’ve done Japan.”

I’m not sure you have. Japan is still there. I think you probably went to Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto for 14 days and took a photo of a vending machine just like I did.

I understand the appeal of a bucket list. Life is short. I too, would rather die having swam in the med and eaten well in a tiny restaurant by the ocean than having spent my life reorganising drawers and doing the washing.

You know the lists like:

• Thirty countries before thirty.
• Fifty books for this year.
• The hundred restaurants you must eat at before you die.
• The ten hikes everyone has to do once.

I bet there’s an app to colour in every country you’ve visited, so you can look at the remaining grey bits of Earth and feel behind.

Ok babe, we’ve got six hours in Florence.
Check the list:

• Duomo.
• Sandwich place from TikTok/Instagram.
• David.
• Uffizi.
• Markets.
• Wine bar from TripAdvisor.

I made a spreadsheet like that when I went to Japan (and I think we ticked off everything on it). I’ve definitely also stood somewhere famous while thinking about whether I’d got enough time to get to the next thing.

I think I wish I’d spent more time just absorbing it all, though, if I’m honest.

The best parts of any experience are usually the small bits anyway, right? Remember the strange supermarket? That random, tiny coffee place in Kyoto that we found when we walked down that random alleyway will stay with me until I die.

My mum tells this story of when she was in Mürren on her honeymoon and she’s looking out at the Jungfrau at night, she always says something like “I felt truly at peace”. Funnily enough, she never talks about how she felt when she stood on top of the thing.

No one’s writing in the itinerary “sit on the balcony, take in the view, like, really feel it.” I guess we do that anyway, maybe.

On a slight tangent, there’s another kind of person I increasingly like: the repeater. You know, the regular in a coffee shop, or the guy who just likes one band a lot, maybe too much. It’s kind of endearing to me. Those people are easier to keep track of.

Repetition feels a bit like the opposite of bucket-listing. You’re choosing to go back because the thing isn’t finished with you yet. When you listen to a song over and over until you hate it.

Anyway, I always think a trip (of almost any length) is just about long enough for a place to start feeling like home, when you’re about to leave, and that wave of melancholy hits you, only then do you feel like you can start taking it in properly. I feel like that almost every time I leave somewhere.

The classic bucket-list creator’s fear is a wasted life. But I don’t think a life is wasted because it contained too few things. It’s wasted when you are rushing through one experience just to get to the next.

Trip: tripped.
Climbing: climbed.
Friends: friendly.
Eclipse: eclipsed.
Book: booked.
Death: pending.