The Listing Bucketeer

Focus

2012-01-26T10:17:00.000-08:00

“If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favourable to him.” Seneca. Epistolae, LXXI., 3. Imagine you are sailing. If you put to the sea, and you sail the way the wind blows, you will make great progress. You will likely end up going round in ragged circles. On the other hand, if you set yourself a destination, you can develop a strategy based on your knowledge of the

The Language Lab of Life

2011-06-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

“La plume de ma tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle. ¡Hola, Paco! ¿Qué tal? ¿Cómo estás? Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant!” Seven years of high-school French and four each of Spanish and Latin had me convinced that learning languages was for others. The equations of physics, the formulas of chemistry, or the language of math were more to my liking. My love affair with human languages

“You’ll be a Man, my Son”

2011-02-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise. If you can dream - and not make dreams your

Do Not Believe What I Believe

2011-02-09T10:08:00.000-08:00

A man who would be great went wandering in the spiritual wilderness. Each day, he spent many hours pondering the meaning of it all. As he went about his daily business of gathering sustenance, he reflected on the principles that enriched his life. For many years, he was content to dwell in this question, to profit from what he learned, and to refine it through his experience. One day, this was

Eagle Mother

2010-12-19T16:11:00.000-08:00

Eagle Mother, I feel you watching them. You watch them soaring higher in ever-widening circles, now at times disappearing against the glare of a harsh blue sky. You see them vanish, reappear, then vanish again. You call to them, but they don’t hear. Their sight rests elsewhere; they can see things you cannot see, hear the call you cannot hear. Sometimes – far less often now – their flight

Small Meditation on a Big Marriage

2010-12-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

Last Friday was my 28th anniversary – of my wedding to an inspiring and wonderful woman. We spent the day apart. Instead I was diving into a weekend workshop on self-expression, knowing that my efforts there were fully supported on the home front. Sharing about my marriage with the other participants and seeing how it moved them, I was again reminded how blessed I am to be in such a loving

The Wondrous Tapestry of Life

2010-06-20T11:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about opportunities. My new bucket list is overflowing with them. Since I inaugurated the list this year, I’ve confronted several future opportunities, moved them into the present, seized them, savoured them, and celebrated them. But where do these opportunities go when I’ve ‘ticked them off’? Then there are the missed opportunities: those fleeting instants where a word was

101 Things that have made Life so-far worth Living

2010-06-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

I prepared the following list while thinking about my Bucket List, and the tapestry of my life. It became the grist for my article, “The Wondrous Tapestry of Life”. The original idea for this exercise came from reading "50 Things I’ve Already Done" by Marelisa Fábrega. (Marelisa also had some of the best advice on creating a bucket list.)The list is far from complete. New items are still

My Left Brain takes a Mayan Holiday

2010-04-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ah, to live life in vacation mode every day! What does it take? I explored the texture of that question on a recent trip to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. For sun-chair reading, I’d packed a copy of Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight. Neuroscientist Dr. Jill reports “from the inside” what it felt like when a massive stroke shut down the left side of her brain, and put the right side in

Living Life in Vacation Mode

2010-04-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

I've taken on a new Life Purpose. Or should I say I've returned to an old one? "To live life like a child: to delight in learning something new every day, to treat each person as special, and to share myself without reserve." One powerful way of waking myself up to this possibility is asking myself the question: How can I live in "vacation mode" all the time? I doubt that vacation mode is

How I Became the Listing Bucketeer

2010-04-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

When I can stand aside from harsh self judgment, I am forced to admit I've had a successful life so far. I'm nurtured by a fantastic relationship with an incredible woman, my wife of 27 years. I've fathered two sons who are now young men, and who fill me with pride and joy as they begin to make their way in the world. With my family, I've moved and traveled when and where I've wanted to, and

The Bucketeer's List

2010-04-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

This is my bucket list as it was after about one month from its inception. I'm posting it primarily by way of illustration for my short article: How I Became the Listing Bucketeer. Obviously my actual list is a never-ending work in progress, but I'm not promising to keep this version up to date. Priority 1: 1. [redacted to protect personal privacy] – DONE!2. Find my passion /

Learning Massage, Learning to Live

2010-01-24T11:03:00.000-08:00

My wife and I have always enjoyed receiving a good massage.Mostly we’d fill the need by heading out to the local clinic or spa, but we also read a few books and took the occasional class on massage techniques. I tried diligently to apply them. Yet I struggled with how to give my partner the kind of massage experience that I know I like to receive. As a ‘geek’ who earned his living in a

The Wise Elder within

2010-01-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

Do we acquire wisdom as we grow older? I wonder. Perhaps wisdom is a state of mind that we can uncover within us at any time. On the road to creating my Bucket List, I imagined asking a much older self what advice he had for me on living the rest of my life. My older self was at the end of his days, and I could sense him conserving his words. He spoke slowly, and there were many pauses while