Your Whole Life Should Be a Bucket List

Sometimes I get antsy and crave adventure. We all do. One of the great things about being young is that I’ve got a ton of life ahead of me to have amazing experiences. One of the bad things about being young is that I’m just too anxious to wait. I’m 23 and have a pretty substantial bucket list. And it just keeps growing. Last weekend I checked off an item I’ve wanted to do for a long time: skydiving.

I’m not afraid of much, but a lot of my friends are (including heights). Let’s just say I haven’t had the easiest time finding anyone that would even get near a dropzone with me. And then in the past six months, two incredible people came into my life: Peter Shankman and Sydney Owen. Sydney is about my age, has a similar outlook on life and has been chronicling her love of freefall and getting her skydiving A-License over the past few months on her blog. I can’t get enough of reading about the ways the sport has changed her life. Peter has been skydiving for years, and loves it more than most people probably realize. He even has the @skydiver twitter handle to prove it. He’s told me about how cathartic freefall is for him and loving the experience you’re having only with yourself. Between the two of them, I’d heard and seen enough to know I could expect an amazing experience. At the peak of intrigue, I made the literal and proverbial jump with Peter at Skydive Chicago’s Summerfest. And thanks to my tandem master Ben, I lived to tell the tale.

I felt calm and focused and totally comfortable as I inched my way to the open door at 13,000 feet. Before I knew it, we were sucked out the side of plane, falling toward the ground at 120 mph. To my own surprise, I didn’t freak out and remembered the tasks and checks my instructor taught me on the ground. What I couldn’t have anticipated was the colors of grass and water, plunging through wispy clouds, the way the Earth curves on the horizon, feeling the temperature change the whole way down…things I couldn’t have experienced in any other way. Yes, it was a thrill, but it was also a bonding experience with nature. And I loved it.

But this wasn’t just to chase an adrenaline rush. This whole thing was prompted by the desire to have a new experience, mix up the relative consistency of my life and do something just because I really, deep down, wanted to do it. There is a reason each of the items are there on my list and it’s an incredible feeling checking something off of it, knowing you prioritized an experience over things money can buy. I hear people talk about the things they want to do “when they have enough money” or “when they retire” or “once they get married” or “once they’re done with college.” I get it, life happens. But, to those excuses, I call shennanigans. If you want to do something, stop waiting around until your distraction goes away. Because when it does, a new one is following right behind it. Make. It. Happen.

Stop thinking about a bucket list as a last-ditch effort to die in peace and start thinking about it as a life journey. You’re never too young. I’ve been checking items off since I was 17. Places you want to visit, people you want to meet, moments you want to witness, causes you want to help, challenges you want to face, people you want to love, these are all the stuff that makes life worth it and we’re fools to not pursue them every day we get to wake up in the morning. One of my favorite sayings is Warren Miller‘s mantra and closes out just about all his ski films: “If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.”

Words to live by if you ask me.

What have you put off for one reason or another that your soul is calling you to seek out? And when are you going to do it?

Photos and video clips by Ron at Skydive Chicago. Video edit by Becky Johns.