Listening To Martha Chaves

This is not the Peruvian politician but the Nicaraguan-Canadian comedian.  I love her work, she is hilarious and incisive and very smart.  Look for her on YouTube.  On the radio I heard her say that immigrants from Third World countries don't have bucket lists.  They don't need them and they don't want them.  They have spent so much of their adrenalin simply surviving and finally getting out of the horrible situations in their countries (can you say Syrian refugees?  Vietnamese Boat People?  Central American survivors of torture and trauma?) that they simply don't have any energy left over for recreational daring and adventure.

I concur.  I was born in this country.  I am a white male (though I don't really talk about it) and I don't have a bucket list.  I always thought it was because I didn't feel I needed to prove anything or that any of those dumb things were really that important to do or see before Mr. Death comes a-knockin'.  Now I wonder if it's also because I simply don't have a lot of leftover energy, or ambition to prove anything.  When I found my little affordable apartment here fourteen years ago I already knew that I really didn't want a lot of excitement in my life.  I had been through extreme poverty and homelessness and was dealing with issues of trauma.  If anything I had already been blessed, or cursed, with an interesting life and I really wanted to keep things as quiet and uninteresting as possible.  Therefore, no bucket list.

I don't fit the bucket list profile.  I have never enslaved myself to a corporation, I have always lived simply and modestly and have long focussed my life on a model of ministry and of what I would call living authentically.  Vocationally I have always worked in support and care-giving, including giving personal care to housebound seniors and providing palliative care to the dying; supporting people struggling with mental illness and poverty.  Many of these years I spent making my life available round the clock to others in need, sheltering in my tiny home homeless strangers and sitting in all night cafes watching protectively over a couple of sad individuals with contracts on their lives, or listening carefully and patiently while local sex workers of all genders sat with me in coffee shops to pour out their hearts as they told me their life story.  I could say more but I don't want to brag and I certainly don't want to bore you, and Gentle Reader, I believe you already get the gist of what I mean to say.

I think when we are young and throughout our lives we are presented with choices.  Regardless what we believe or whether or who we choose or choose not to believe in, I believe that this is God appearing to us and speaking to us and inviting us to take the road less travelled.  Once you have started doing this you are not going to be needing any bucket lists.  You are living your bucket list and it is always going to be for a much higher purpose than merely keeping your sorry butt in designer jeans or Lululemon.