February 4 Forum

Walt

That’s the best part.  I love that.

Jack

I agree with that; however, I think the practical matter is that when people turn 85, they need to make important decisions about possessions. I need to get rid of all my physical stuff and I want to go to these three places before I die. So, from a practical standpoint, the bucket list is often a bucket list of activities, while the list of possessions would frequently be made up of physical stuff. And believe me, I’m a collector. I have a house full of stuff and God bless my kids when they will have to throw my stuff out.

My brother had a flood. And he essentially got to experience the Swedish death cleanse when he was seventy because his house flooded and he lost eighty percent of his stuff. And his kids were like, oh, thank God.  Now we don’t have to go through it.  I’ve never seen a family with as much angst over a giant flood.  My brother was devastated.  His kids were ecstatic.

Jeremy

So, Bill, are you basically saying that there’s a possession, so to speak, of shared life experiences with family members or friends that in many ways become more precious as we’re ageing and that the material possessions start to dissipate naturally?  Is that part of what you’re saying?  So that it’s having more shared experiences or as Jack says, activities. Those could be solo activities or shared activities.  My guess would be the shared activities might be the most valued in our late stage or, what is it, the third act?

Bill B

Well, there is something interesting to be done about the bucket list concept. The work that’s recently been done on that list involves incompatibility. The bucket list, if we define it as activities, often bumps up against the fact of reduced physical mobility. Often what you have is regret that the bucket list is now nothing more than living with the regret: “I wish I had gone on this trip.” Or what you have, for instance, is people loving to watch travel shows on TV—as a substitute for actually going to Egypt or going to whatever. So, what I think is occurring is that often our possession is a symbolic representation of a relationship or experience. I have that little thing on the shelf that reminds me of that trip I took when I was thirty-five years old or that I took when I was even younger. So, I begin to value what I’ve already done, along with what I would like to do, because I may not be in a place where I can do it now.