Revisiting my Bucket List From Age 19
Four years ago, at the end of my first year of undergrad, I wrote a bucket list of the many things I wanted to accomplish in my life, from places to travel to books to read. Tonight, when I found that list on my old blog and decided to revisit it, I expected to feel two things: happiness at the things I’ve managed to check off and disappointment at the things I still haven’t managed to do — but those weren’t at all the dominant emotions.
Certainly, the points that I did check off brought back several smiles:
Ride a dogsled
Graduate U of T with a BA
See Idina Menzel perform live
Watch a Broadway show
See Wicked, Chicago, and Rent live
Stay in a five-star hotel
Own a dog
Scuba-dive
Visit London, Florence, Siena, Venice, Paris, Versailles, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, Amsterdam, Budapest, Angkor Wat and Banff
Watch Star Wars
Read Winnie-the-Pooh and Le Petit Prince
The many things I still work towards and long for brought about initial impatience, but that steadily got replaced by anticipation of how much is still to come:
Go paint-balling
Walk down the aisle and exchange wedding vows
Become a mother
Ride a hot air balloon
Publish a book
Make it on the New York Times Bestseller List
See my work come to life onscreen
Give a standing ovation speech
Visit Edinburgh, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands, the Maldives, and many more
What I wasn’t expecting was how much I’ve experienced and enjoyed and loved that was never even on my list to begin with. I have done incredible things over the past four years that were never even on my radar:
Pole danced
Learned how to do chin-ups
Hiked through the largest cave in the world in a 4-day camping expedition that included scaling a 90m rock wall
Had my words published in The New York Times
Jumped into the Kuang Si Falls in Luang Prabang, Laos
Managed a fair-trade café
Embraced my Vietnamese identity
Read Do Not Say We Have Nothing, All The Light We Cannot See, The Song of Achilles, and other life-changing books
Moved to Québec City to work a job I love
… And so much personal growth and fulfillment that doesn’t neatly fit under a bullet point.
Conversely, certain items that I’d once deemed important are no longer priorities — ride a gondola; be part of a successful flash mob; score a winning goal — and new dreams have surfaced to take their place:
Sleep outside in the Moroccan desert
See Hamilton live
Visit all 7 continents
Watch Swan Lake with my mother
There was a time I feared my dreams shrinking as I aged, a time I fought against the reality that I might never walk on the moon or see the peak of Mount Everest — but my dreams aren’t shrinking. They’re fluid and evolving, and growth means making room for surprise. For me, as a meticulous planner who needs constant control, the realization of how much good happens outside of plans was a beautiful reminder of the best parts that life can bring.