The idea of having a ‘bucket list’ is a relatively new concept, but one that has caught on quickly over the past decade.
With Baby Boomers having more disposable income at their hands than any other previous generations, it’s no surprise they’ve added wild adventures and fun-filled holidays to their list of must-dos before heading to the ‘other side’.
While it all sounds like great fun, one woman isn’t having a bar of it and has penned a scathing critique of Boomers who deigned to create their own bucket lists.
Marion McGilvary wrote in The Daily Mail that she is “sick” of hearing people go on about their bucket lists.
McGilvary asks: “Am I the only one appalled by the trend of baby boomers dreaming up their bucket list of things they’d like to see and do before they die?
“The remoter parts of the planet are already full of intrepid oldies swimming with dolphins and admiring the Northern Lights as they cross off another exhausting experience.”
“Do you know what was on my father’s bucket list? Seeing me ‘reared’, as he put it. He was 40 when I was born, which isn’t so old these days, but he and my mother married very young, and my sister was already 15. He just wanted to be sure he’d see me grow up. That was his ambition.”
McGilvary calls her fathers beliefs the “jam” that held them together. She believes that old family values have started to become obsolete because “you can’t boast about jam at a dinner party or Instagram it” and that “bucket lists, rather than being things you want to do when you’ve been told your death is imminent, are now just show-offy Facebook posts of the future.”
She added: “Frankly, I’m okay, thanks. No, really. I don’t think I’m about to shuffle off to the great waiting room in the sky, but if my number is called, rest assured that I was not fussed I didn’t see Ayers Rock or the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.”
The 59- year-old concedes she has had enough adventures to know what is really important and notes that raising a family is one of the greatest adventures of all.
In response to the growing trend of the bucket list, McGilvary has created her own ‘un-bucket list’ which includes never going camping again, never going to another festival and never wearing wellington boots again.
After a cancer scare, McGilvary realised that rather than jet-setting around the world the only thing she wanted to do was spend time with her family.
“Is there something wrong with being content as you are? Like my father, I’ve seen my four children reared. I’ve done my biological duty and replicated; isn’t that enough? Can’t I just take my bra off and read a book?” she asked.