The Bucket List

If you haven't done many thrilling things in your life, and then it's time to die, are you a failure?

I'm sure Rob Reiner and the makers of The Bucket List did not mean to imply that. I just drew that inference from watching 'The Bucket List' starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. In it, they play two men in their sixties who are in the cancer ward together, who make a pact to go out and do some things they put off--things like sky diving and climbing the pyramids. Lucky for the characters, Jack Nicholson is a billionaire and they can do all that stuff.

Well, okay. The Morgan Freeman character is an ordinary auto mechanic. He was the one who started the bucket list. On it, he wrote, "Witness something magnificent" and "Do something just for the good of it." Those are things a simple man can do. They take up just as much importance on the list.

The movie is predictable. They meet, get to know each other through chemo treatments, and tell one another their life stories. One of them is a tycoon, secretly lonely. Another is a middle-class family man who secretly thinks he missed out on a lot by buckling down to domestic life.

I laughed and I also got a refresher on depression that I'd just been shaking off. Coming out of my midlife crisis, though, I handled the depressing aspects well. This crisis taught me about loss and mortality. I appreciated how, in this movie, they didn't overplay this aspect but didn't soft-pedal it either.

It was a good story. But I think it would be a mistake for any of us to say we're losers if we haven't been skydiving or something like that. Better to look at the present moment and do whatever's at hand with a willing spirit, and do good work, even if it's just enjoying a moment at the computer. Doing good in each moment can't help but take us to a better future.