What HAVEN'T you done?

It is assumed that once you are past about 18 years old, that you begin to accumulate 'life experiences' through education, vocational training, military or other worthy pursuits.

There have been times over the course of my life that I have listened to the "life list" of experiences of others and been frankly overwhelmed with the pages long events that have filled their days and nights.

I feel like a cardboard cut out.

From a distance, everything seems okay, but up close upon further inspection, there just isn't much there filling the gaps between the birthdays.

I know how other people fill their time. They read, they go to school, they volunteer - they live.

Has my existence become a narrowed sliver? An imitation of life? Worse yet, an imitation of what I think is life but it really isn't living at all?

What defines the 'life list'?

And, when we see the time of our life becoming less at the end zone and more statistics of our past half or three quarters, what comes next? A bludgeoning, bruising, hard won goal line stand to prove that we still have something in us after all or simply a list to be checked off until we die?

There are people who refer to this as 'a bucket list', as in "things to do before I kick the bucket".

Hmm.

I don't want to wait until the end and rush to cram living into the last little bit just to say "SEE!! I checked these things off my list!! I lived!! I mattered!"

I'd like to believe that while my list may not be the same over the course of my life as the next gal's list, that the things that fill the slots are worth the space. And if they are not, there isn't anything I can do to change what might have been into useful material now.

People who are driven to succeed in their lives just seem to accumulate more lines on their lists. But I'm thoroughly convinced that just doing something doesn't mean you are GOOD at doing that something.

Can I claim it honestly if it isn't something I do well? I can play lots of musical instruments. Equally poorly. But in my own defense, I play a few of them pretty well. Well enough to have earned A's in music in high school and college for my skill. Sure, there's always going to be someone who can go and best me in their musical ability. That used to bother me until I realized that may be the only thing they have going for them in their entire lives.

I think that all of our experiences, whether they 'measure up' to what someone else can claim or not, are valuable to making us more than the cooing, gurgling mass of raw material we all arrived as when we drew our first breath on this planet.

We didn't get there on our own and our life experiences, including any personal bucket list we have on a running tab, make us who we are - warts and all.

There's lots of things I haven't done. There's lots of things I want to do. I hope there is time left in the sands trickling out of my personal hour glass to accomplish some of them. My imagination of what I'd like to do far outstrips reality, so I'm willing to give a point or two in favor of dealing with the day to day minus the daydreaming haze.

I'll admit to a pang or two of jealousy when I hear the exploits and adventures of people I know who don't realize just how amazing their life journey is. They can't see the wonder and miracle of all they have accomplished because they have made the conscious choice to see life as 'no big deal'.

I can't live that way.

Even in marginal circumstance, life is too big a deal to ascribe to the 'later' box on the desk.

There isn't any way to know when or if tomorrow will ever come for any of us. We hope it will come, and we pray and plan, but there are no guarantees for us.

I don't believe that should become a justification for living life so far out on the edge that you are dangling over thin air. But sometimes, our cardio workout needs just that extra thrill to move us from complacency to action.

What haven't you done? What do you want to do, or be or become?

When was the last time it mattered to you?