The Bucket List

No Such Kodak Moment

From morbid time to time, I'd wonder what my own bucket list will be, when I'm given a certain number of months left to live. Will I have things to accomplish being totally selfish for personal glory, or will the list consists of things that're more charitable toward others? It's easy to to have the former I suppose, and easily quantifiable goals such as travel the world and the likes, but I'm beginning to appreciate the meaningfulness of making a difference in the lives of others, especially so since I think I haven't done anything in that respect.

Two of Hollywood's veteran actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, team up as two unlikely characters turned friends when they find themselves holed up in the same hospital room seeking treatment for their terminal illness. And they cannot be more different of course. One's a family man, earning his keep in a modest job, whose source of entertainment is trivia. The other's a billionaire, having a personal assistant attend to his every whim and fancy, and having generally a mightier-than-thou attitude toward everyone, unleashing caustic remarks toward others for the heck of it.

Through their interaction, they soon find common ground in having an obstacle in their lives to overcome, and that's whether to sit around and mope, hoping for a miracle cure, or to go out there and do things that they've always craved to do, of course with money never being an issue because one of them's a loaded man. So off they go on the adventure of their lives, visiting exotic countries, and taking risks that they don't normally accept. It's easy though to diss their list as implausible to mimic because frankly speaking, one does really need a lot of cash to accomplish exactly what they did. Needless to say, both Nicolson and Freeman are such strong actors, that you really wonder if they're really acting their roles, or are genuinely enjoying themselves as they feed off each other's energy as they have fun with the taskings.

But if you take a step back and examine the list, they are in fact quite modest statements, which the characters themselves joke about as being quite lame and without balls. It depends on how one interprets those statements I guess. A majestic view can be a view from the highest of moutains or from the depths of oceans, or it can be, in simpler terms, like one of the most beautiful evening skies I've witnessed in a long while when walking to the cinema.

And to top it all, it's again a reminder, like all films dealing with death as a subject matter, to live your life to the fullest every day, and not let it go to waste. Some of us are so busy trying to figure out our purpose in life that we fail to live it, and some, never taking a step back and appreciate what we already have, until it's too late. For now, my bucket list will look something like this: Witness the Aurora Borealis, trek around the world on a modest budget, race in an F1 car, and hey, I share one with the charactes too - kiss the most beautiful girl in the world. Some of course could stay impossible dreams, but that's what makes it a bucket list, right? The last chance to go all out and complete the taskings. What's yours?