Everyone seems to have a bucket list. If I started to put my dreams into a bucket, I’d need a really big bucket. The problem with my bucket would be this. I have a dream, I tuck it safely into my bucket for another day. Phew, saved THAT dream, I feel better. One day I’m going to do all of those things on my bucket list. My bucket would just get more and more full because everything I put in it is for another day. As a relatively impatient person (okay, Marco says I’m the most impatient person he knows and he isn’t the first to make this observation) I can’t stand all that stuff just sitting in my bucket waiting to be picked. All my dreams would feel a bit like I did in my high school gym class. ‘Pick me, pick me!’ That would make for a lot of unhappy, insecure, unfulfilled dreams just wasting away in an old bucket.
I know from experience that death puts a damper on our bucket lists. It cuts our dreams short – we never know when it might happen. I’ve lost friends in their teens and twenties, cousins as babies and young adults, elderly friends and relatives. It’s like nothing else – it will happen when it happens and it won’t wait for us to complete a few things we really wanted to do but just never found the time. So in fact, while everyone talks about how important it is to have a bucket list, it’s based on a false reality – the belief that we can plan when we will dig into our bucket and we’ll get started whenever we want. Let’s be honest – most of us tuck our dreams away in a bucket so we feel better – ‘Ha, now I have a plan. I’m going to do that…later’.
When I woke up from my Hummingbird Dream (read blog post number one, then you’ll know what I’m talking about), I felt different and it sounds goofy to say that I felt ‘more present’ than I had when I went to sleep a few hours before. The idea that instead of talking endlessly with Marco about the house we would buy someday in Nova Scotia to retire, or the Beethoven Festival we would go to one day in Germany (yep, that’s how devoted I am – this isn’t called livingwithoutbeethoven for no reason), we had decided to actually-physically-no-bucket-required…do something exciting and maybe even a bit ‘risky’.
Today we’re heading off for a week in Nova Scotia thanks to buddy passes from my brother. Then, just a few days after we get home, Marco is heading to Australia for the first time. Now, in all fairness, it could also be his last, you never know. Maybe he’ll get there for his presentation and visit and decide it’s not for him. A month ago, I would have fantasized about things all falling through so we could just plod along contentedly through life. Now I’m worrying a bit that Marco might change his mind and decide he doesn’t like it. What then???? I’ve started a blog, I’ve organized piano lessons, I’m planning to spend more time drawing, I’m excited about traveling to Australia in a couple of months for a visit…the list goes on and on and on.
As I mentioned, I’m impatient. I fight change fairly quickly. I panic, reject the idea, think about it for a few seconds, then I get excited about it. Sometimes I flip flop for awhile between the agony and the ecstasy. So, now I’ve decided that it’s all good, Marco can go, I’ll be okay. Here comes the impatience. All this waiting is too much for me, I’ve decided it’s okay to do this and so I want to do it right now. It doesn’t work that way so I guess I’ll have to wait. In the meantime, we’ll have a great trip to Nova Scotia.
cindy rublee - living without beethoven 