Every time I open Facebook, there seems to be a new Thought Catalog article titled 20 things to do before you turn 20, 15 places to see before you die, 10 things you MUST do in your twenties. Now don’t get me wrong—I’m all for bucket lists. But do we really need them at such a young age? I feel like we’re accepting that death is imminent, which of course it is, but why do we have to think that way while we have so much life left in us? I don’t know about you, but I’m living and not dying. I plan on completing a bucket list one day, but I firmly believe that bucket lists are for when you grow old and have a list of things you were too busy to experience while you were young.
I’m twenty. God forbid something goes wrong; I have at least seventy years to do everything I’ve ever dreamt of doing. Here’s the thing: I could have died at birth, but God had other plans for me. I’ll never forget the assignment I had during my freshman English class where we had to ask an adult what motivates them. I asked my dad because he always seems to have sassy answers to questions like this. For example, I imagined him responding, “A cold Manhattan poured by my lovely, eldest daughter at the end of a torturous workday.” His actual response to me was more than I could have ever imagined and is now the basis of how I live my life day to day:
“Having been born with an essentially fatal heart condition, the thing which has inspired me has been the thought often expressed by Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Paulie—God saved me for a special purpose. So I tend to look at the challenges and opportunities in my life as things which I am, for some unknown reason, uniquely chosen to take on.”
I was speechless when my dad sent me this response. I was so inspired that I saved the email, copied it into a Word document and took a screenshot to leave on my desktop. My dad and I have always had the same work ethic: on the outside while we’re lounging on the couch watching the Red Sox we look like the laziest father/daughter combination you’ve ever seen. But when it comes down to it, we are two extremely passionate people about our work, our friends, our family and our hobbies (don’t ask me how dad is so passionate about computer programming—but, to each his own).
Besides being passionate, my dad and I both know that we’re here for special purposes—even if we don’t quite understand why. Now, I’m not saying you have to have a near death experience to realize that you’re here for a reason. I look around and see so much talent at my school, and I saw so much passion at L.L.Bean this past summer. Every person I meet is here for a reason—whether it’s for programming computers, traveling the world to help people in need, teaching children who struggle to learn or fulfilling their dream by dancing on Broadway.
Each of us has the potential to live from the second we wake up to the second we go to bed. So I say live today like you’re living—not by following a list of things that you must do before your twenty-first birthday. Your heart is beating, your brain is dreaming and your soul is full of passion. If you’re not dead, you’re young—you have endless time and countless possibilities every single day. And regarding that list of the 15 places you have to visit before you die? Well, I hope you get to visit every single one of them—but please don’t forget to live in the meantime.