Should we kick the bucket list?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Why does Terry Prone say we should 'kick the bucket list'?
Now joining me in studio is Terry Prone, because she has decided that the bucket list... Well, we need to kick the bucket, really. It's not what you're saying. It's got to go, Terry Prone. What's it ever done to offend you?
I think that it is the most selfish, self-absorbed, pointless exercise. And I was surprised to find, Ciara, that it's relatively new. What happened was, there was a guy named Justin Zachman in the States... And he decided quite sensibly to make a list of things he wanted to achieve in his life. Most good career people do this. They make lists. And he just added the little thing that these were things he wanted to do before he kicked the bucket. And then he shortened it to call it Justin's Bucket List. And oddly, one of the things on his bucket list was to make a movie with a major distributor that would become a hit. And seven years later, he did it. With a movie called The Bucket List. Now, I don't remember this.
I never saw it. Maybe you did. But it was Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman, yeah. And these were two blokes who encountered each other in an oncologist's office. because they were both for the high jump, and they began to talk about things that they'd like to do. Do you know the sort of things that any sensible person in the world wants to do, like motorbike down the Great Wall of China? Sign me up.
I still have to be honest, Harry. I don't get what part of it is offensive to you. Is it that it's sort of synonymous with dying and it's only then that you start to live your life? Or do you feel like it's a social obligation now that you have to tell everybody about it? It's all of the above.
How did the term 'bucket list' originate and become popular?
First of all, it is a cliche. I never get interviewed these days by journalists or broadcasters doing a profile that they don't ask me what my bucket list is. And I'm looking at them thinking... I have had a life, you should pardon the expression, to die for. I've achieved a million things more than I was ever entitled to. I got lucky with the man I married. It was all great. So am I going to look a gift horse in the arse now by saying, and my bucket list is to do it. I have got everything I ever wanted. So the first thing is, it's a cliche. But the second thing is that it is fascinating. Phenomenally selfish. Nobody ever says, well, my bucket list is to volunteer with seriously disrupted or challenged children.
Nobody ever does that. It's the self-indulgent stuff. And more than that, oh, God. They all choose things that allow them to come back and bore the hell out of the rest of us. Like the people who have done the Camino.
Oh, God. How do you know somebody's done the Camino? Because they've told you.
Yes. Yes, I hadn't heard that. You're dead right. And they want to tell you the insights that they have as a result, which are zero. None of these things actually change it. And the other thing, if you know you're going to pop your clocks, let's say because you've been told you have a year to live or whatever, although they tend not to get that specific anymore, or because you are very old. Why would you want to kayak down the Amazon to make memories? Do you know this making memories, Lark? If you're only going to be around for a year, what's the point in making a memory that'll only last that long?
What problems does Terry identify with bucket lists being self‑absorbed?
Because I think people have a sense, right, that when their time comes, right, and they're lying there waiting to go through the pearly gates or going to ashes, ashes, dust to dust, if that's where your head is at. They want to think that they have lived a full life, that they have... interacted with people that they have seen parts of the world that they have had experience that they have pushed themselves challenged themselves that they haven't just plodded through life you know experiencing the ordinary and never doing anything to take them out of that place I mean you've done it but lots of people haven't but That's their problem. That's their career plan.
And they're trying to fix it. No, their career plan, if they have ended up in a job that bores them, that doesn't pay them enough, that is dreadfully routine, and they're in their 30s or their 40s, now is the time, folks.
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