My Evolving Resolutions

These last few days, I have been thinking of making a bucket list. Heard about it? No? Then surely you are near about my age.

Every year on New Year’s Eve, we are in the habit of making a long list of things we plan to do in the next year. Then with the coming of New Year, we start with a bang, but as days pass into weeks and weeks into first month, we forget the list and start with our normal routine. The ‘things to do list’ is either on the study table or on the fridge door waiting for us to come looking for it. I too, had been making this list for many years. The format of the list changed every time, but goals remained the same. Losing weight, going for a long trip and sometimes for short trips, meeting friends more often, eating healthy home cooked food, wearing a saree at least once a week and the like.

And then my son got married, and my daughter-in-law came along. One day she showed me the list of things she wanted to do in the near future. It was a comprehensive list with so many goals and she called it her ‘bucket list,’ things she wanted to do or experience before an age she specified. I was impressed.

After that I heard this word often. A lady told me that her young son has it on his bucket list to touch 25 countries before he turned 25.

I thought of making a bucket list myself, the list of things I really wanted to do before the final day. In came Covid, and my list stopped at the first goal. The one and only, staying alive through the pandemic. Now having achieved this goal, I have started working on my bucket list again. In the process of making the list, I learnt that we need to keep a few things in mind before finalizing our list.

First and foremost is to write those things that we have on our mind. Secondly, it is very important to do a survey of what other people are doing. There are 10 people out there, doing 10 different things, but we have to realize we cannot do all the stuff, so we have to see what is that one thing we really want for ourselves, the thing that will make us happy otherwise we will find ourselves in a whirlpool of things, unsatisfied, unhappy and confused. It is eminent to see what we want. Next is to see our budget ,and of course the timeline. We cannot ignore the timeline. Say a person in his twenties wants to climb the Himalayas. He should do it now. He may not be able to do it when he is say sixty. Not that it is impossible, but it is just that he cannot predict his health conditions at sixty.  What I want to say is that you cannot be present everywhere so be very careful to select where you want to be.

I am considering all pros and cons of things I really want to achieve at my age. So, first on my list is eating healthy every day, to remain healthy. Only when I achieve this goal will I be able to pursue other goals on my bucket list. I want to focus on few goals and achieve them. Our dreams keep us going, but a bucket list surely gives us direction.

Navita Goel