The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead has a point: it’s time to kick the bucket list to the kerb. She writes:
[The bucket list] is the YOLO-ization of cultural experience, whereby the pursuit of fleeting novelty is granted greater value than a patient dedication to an enduring attention – an attention which might ultimately enlarge the self, and not just pad one’s experiential résumé. The notion of the bucket list legitimizes this diminished conception of the value of repeated exposure to art and culture. Rather, it privileges a restless consumption, a hungry appetite for the new. I’ve seen Stonehenge. Next?
Thinking about my own most transformative moments, I can’t identify one which I had specifically sought to make me feel more alive. Bungee jumping was fun, sure, and running a half marathon gave me a nice sense of accomplishment. But the moments I will remember on my death bed – those which made me feel honoured to be alive – came at unexpected times: laying down on a parking lot patch of grass at night with a lover; picking up an unpromising book only to be jolted by how it spoke to me at a specific time in my life; an old 1990s song serendipitously playing during a night drive; eating my grandmother’s last batch of apricot jam after she died; love-making that suddenly turned into a true communion.
In this kicking-the-bucket-list spirit, I asked colleagues and readers to share tried and tested experiences which are routinely added to wish lists but should be avoided at all costs. Think of it as a time-saving exercise for anyone considering swimming with dolphins to be a life-affirming idea.
- Going to the Vatican. There is not spiritual experience to be had at this holy place turned tourist-mecca. Touring the Vatican is like being in a mosh pit and you’ll be lucky to linger for longer than three minutes at any particular art site before being pushed along by the crowds. Standing shoulder to shoulder in the Sistine Chapel as just another part of the sweaty, heaving mass you will have your view of the roof constantly blocked by tourists holding up iPads (despite the no photos rule) and guards yelling for everyone to be quiet (despite the no talking rule). – @bkjabour
- Go on a cruise. Going on a tour and being shepherded around like animals is bad enough. The idea of being trapped on a boat, surrounded by hundreds of miles of sea with nowhere to go, takes it to the next level. Maybe there is a class and age element to it, too. Truth is, I don’t want to be stuck on a boat with a bunch of elderly bogans. – m_onicatan
- Have sex with a stranger. Jessica Lange’s character has some fantastic lines in the movie Tootsie, where she describes to Dustin Hoffman her fantasy of being approached for sex by a hot stranger and giving in to a desire that needs no further words to be communicated. In the movie, as in life, the fantasy rarely plays out that way. Leaving risks of desperately unsexy infection aside, one can be rubbered up like Jacques Cousteau on a dive in the Arctic and yet be afflicted with the worst sexual chemical contagion of all - the release of the bonding hormone oxytocin, convincing you that the random she’s in bed with is actually the love of her life. (anonymous)
- Kiss the Blarney Stone. I went to Ireland for a week’s holiday with my father when I was about 18. The one piece of advice offered by people when asked for tips on things to do in the Cork area was to go and kiss the Blarney Stone. “It’ll give you the gift of the gab,” they said. “You have to do it!” So we went. But instead of receiving the gift of charm and eloquence, I received the gift of laryngitis and I couldn’t speak for a week. Overrated.– @itsalanevans
- Hard drugs, “just to try it”. The reputation of heroin as a chemical waking dream of visionaries has only been romanticised by culture because some of the individuals killed by it did cool things. Their achievements were in spite of heroin, chaps, not because of it: junkie poet Michael Dransfield’s claim that once you become a heroin addict “you never want to be anything else” was prophetic; he never was anything else because heroin killed him. To spare any readers a desire to experiment with the drug, its effects are roughly that of a dental needle that pleasantly numbs your self-respect while causing you to stumble around like a mannequin with a bowel problem. (anonymous)
- Snow sports. I was 26 before I saw snow for the first time and what a let down it was. It is is freezing, slippery and insanely expensive to do anything fun on it as an adult. – @bkjabour
- Learn to play an instrument. Learning to play an instrument (usually the guitar) is a bucket list staple. It’s also a heinous act of self-deception, because really what we want is to “learn to look cool while playing a musical instrument”. Even if the bucket lister manages to exercise the discipline, patience and flair needed to truly master an instrument, it’s impossible to adult-educate yourself into the swagger of a Kurt Cobain or Janis Joplin. I discovered this the hard way by having the door closed on me repeatedly, both while practising and “performing”, as part of my ambition to jump the chasm from “guitarist whose music people can tolerate” to “guitarist whose music impresses women”. Save yourself the time and money and go to Stonehenge or something instead. - @adambrereton
- Speaking of Stonehenge ... Don’t. – @GuardianJessica
- Everest base camp. OK, so trekking in Nepal should be on your bucket list. No question. It’s a spectacular, life-affirming, transformative experience. It’s also intensely challenging. On day two of my first trek, along part of the Annapurna circuit, we climbed 1,200m. That’s the equivalent of four Sydney Towers, straight up. And that was the “easiest” trek the tour group offered. Two days later we stood in a wildflower-filled field atop a Himalayan “hill” surrounded by snow-capped peaks … and looked down to see a plane fly below us. The Khumbu region, home to the base camp trek, is similarly stunning. Trek there? Hell yeah. Just don’t set your heart on reaching a pile of rocks strewn with prayer flags with the view of a few tents in the distance. (Full disclosure: I was within a couple of kilometres of said rock pile when a sudden headache that turned out to be an altitude-induced cerebral oedema put me on a fast chopper down. But my sister, who went all the way, insists that I “made it” to base camp. “It wasn’t like I was high-fiving mountaineers,” she says.) And trekking at above 4,000m is really, really hard. It’s like swimming through wet cement. Despite all the energy you’re expending there’s constant nausea, so you can barely choke down sweet ginger tea or a clear garlic soup. Life just isn’t meant to exist that high. Sure, you’ll spot a bit of lichen here and there but the only animals you see are the yaks and mules dragged there by humans. And yep, the views are breathtaking. But you can barely breathe, so you don’t care. Take plenty of photos – there’s not much else to do when you stop every few steps gasping – and in six months you might be able to look at them without feeling ill. It’s worth stressing here again how incredible trekking in Nepal is. The people are warm and welcoming. I loved every day I was there; I can’t wait to go again. But enjoy it for the experience, good and bad, not because you want to tick off “Everest base camp”. And stick below the treeline, people. It’s there for a reason. – @MarshallNikki
- Visit the leaning tower of Pisa. Why travel all that way to see an architectural mistake? It’s no longer moving, disappointingly small and besieged by backpackers composing those hilarious “holding it up with your hand” shots. - @Ian_J_Griffiths
- Safaris: Elephants. Everyone likes elephants: they’re impressively large, excellent at remembering stuff and some of them can even fly. And even though they’re massive, they’re scared of mice! Awww. So safaris in theory should be similarly excellent. But what you actually get with a safari is an incredibly expensive way of sitting around looking at a bush for hours. If you’re lucky you might see an elephant really far away. In fact, it may not even be an elephant it could just be a rock. Save your cash and watch some David Attenborough films, with the money you’ve saved from staying at home you can even fork out for HD and see them as nature intended. Or just google “elephants” and look at some nice pictures. Make sure your browser is Safari to get the full experience, mind. – @tom_lutz
- Going to Paris. I’m a city lover but after 48 hours in the City of Love I had my passport stolen, met a frotteur on a crowded train and was gobbed on in the street. If only I’d copped the latter before that métro ride – it might have put the sexual predator off. I shudder remembering the moment he met my eye and stared back and I realised what seemed to be happening really was happening. Of course, in my fury my French deserted me. (Frotteur is a French word, right?) Sure, Paris has some postcard views. The bits near the Seine are pretty and the lights are twinkly at night. But the people are beaten down and miserable. And they piss in the subway ... and worse. On a previous visit we were looking up at the Arc de Triomphe when we tripped over someone taking a dump on the Champs-Élysées. At nine in the morning. – @MarshallNikki
- Going to Vegas. Unless you’re some high-roller whale type with a helicopter and Bradley Cooper in your entourage, I would give Las Vegas a miss. The thing you don’t get from the movies is that it’s not glittery and glamorous – it’s just quite sad, particularly by daylight. The “architecture” looks like a cheap movie set, the vibe is seedy, and everywhere you look there are thousands of people either stuffing money into slot machines or stuffing food into their mouths at all-you-can-eat buffets. Sure go there with loads of friends and have a drunken laugh. But really, why there? – @emilyhwilson
- Going to Burning Man. Burning Man festival: posited as radical self-reliance and spontaneous, really a middle-class cult. – @PaulDalgarno
- Skydiving. I have no idea why it is life affirming to wilfully fall out of a plane. – @agentbrasidas
- Seeing Uluru. An (albeit sacred) rock in the middle of nowhere that takes ages to get to – and where I ate three flies. We were woken up at 5am to go and see the sunrise. It was overcast, I’ve seen better sunrises in Barnsley. No view is good enough to make me inadvertently eat three flies. - christianobeno
- Surfing. Fact: you won’t stand up the first time. Or the second. Or the third. But you will be shouted at by macho men who think they own the beach and can’t bear to share it with beginners. When you do finally catch waves, it will be wonderful. But not worth months of gulping freezing water and neverending tinsels of dark bruises on your legs. – @GuardianJessica