Bucket Lists

 I don't have a bucket list. And I wish people would stop asking me if I do... Recently I appeared on a podcast to discuss it. Of course the host asked me what is on my bucket list. 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 of Salt Water
Joseph Edward Southall (1861-1944)
Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]  

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, bucket-list fever is spreading like a virus. The age of the listers is getting disturbingly younger. People have categories: food, play, dating ... I just heard one woman say that she's going "to draw with chalk" as part of her "summer bucket list". It will be so "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 guides to the bucket-list, guides on to how to use the guides and therapy to assist you in making the 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 rehash - no thanks. The idea of having to have an adventure before I "kick the bucket" is heinous. 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 "f... it list". F... 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.

(Rose Rouse, The Guardian, 2026)

How refreshing to read about one person's refusal to succumb to bucket-list fever and the notion that somehow  bucket-lists can be therapeutic. A spirit of independence is displayed rather than the social conformity shown by some of the bucket-list personnel on social media. No FOMO for Rose.