No Bucket List! One Thing Just Leads to Another

A real book I found in a Bronx Thrift Shop

In a thrift shop in The Bronx, I saw the book above.  Inside the book are hundreds of places and activities that could form a personal Bucket List.  Just for good measure there are a dozen blank pages if skydiving naked and swimming the Bering Strait in the winter aren’t enough (I made those up.)

I don’t have a Bucket List. I don’t like Bucket Lists.  To have a Bucket List, you have to plan, stick with the plan, and believe you need to do or see a specific thing before you die. 

The stick-with-the-plan part is tough for me.  And all of my travel has deeply convinced me that nothing leads to further travel like the overwhelming impression many trips have made on me. 

It turns out, I am too optimistic to think I need to see and do this list of things, and I am unable to stick to a long-term plan so I could not have a list of Must-Do-Before-I-Die activities even if I wanted to.

I am a confirmed enthusiast as a personality type: Enneagram Type 7, Myers Briggs ENTP, and Strength Finders Woo. So, the thing I want to do right now is something that flowed from the last thing I did. And then there is a strong need to do what I think is being taken away from me. When I perceive my freedom or freedom of choice is inhibited, that motivates me to do things—sometimes awesome things, sometimes not so awesome. 

My re-enlistment in the Army a dozen years ago was an idea I held loosely for months until I broke my neck and nine other bones in a near-fatal bike racing crash. In a neck and chest brace, I saw enlistment being taken from me. I got angry and wanted to enlist. I was angry in a way that has happened in races when I crash and jump back on the bike, determined to finish, ignoring as well as I can the injuries. 

On my recent trip to Israel, I had planned to ride the length of the country. It’s a small country so the ride would be the equivalent of riding from Philadelphia to Boston.  But my recently replaced knee swelled up the night before the trip.  So instead of riding the length of the country, I drove the length of the country and then spent a week riding in and out of Jerusalem. 

My next trip overseas begins in Jerusalem with my friend Cliff and ends with visiting the Dachau and Flossenburg concentration camps.  In between I will be in Athens and Macedonia and Rwanda. I was going to go to Russia or Azerbaijan, but I wanted to go to Rwanda and just read a book about the Rwandan Genocide. I can get a relatively cheap flight and spend a week there.

I know people who travel by a plan and I realize the benefits of what they do. I admire them. It’s just that I know myself well enough that I can’t be them. 

I was delighted planning my 2017 trip across Eastern Europe visiting the worst Holocaust sites and many memorials.  I had planned to see and pass through 20 countries.  I did. But seven of the countries were different than the countries I planned to see. 

At one point I was on a morning train from Prague to Warsaw. My plan was to get to the Baltic States and St. Petersburg, then back through Lviv, Ukraine, to Auschwitz and back to Germany. But the ride from Belgrade to Prague had taken days longer than I planned. I realized that if I went north, I would not be able to spend a week at the Monastery where my friend Cliff is Franciscan Monk. 

As I thought, the sign board above my head said Katowice in five minutes.  Katowice is 30 miles from Auschwitz.  I could leave the train, ride south and be there by early afternoon. I pulled my bike from the hanging rack, grabbed my bags and left the train, throwing the bags so I could get the bike through the narrow door easily during the brief stop.

I rode from Auschwitz to Lviv and back to Krakow with a new plan and saw different countries. 

And from beginning to end, I was and am delighted with the trip. 

Beyond this year, I want to go back to Hong Kong and to southern reaches of South America, but maybe I will end up in Iceland or Mumbai or North Platte, Nebraska. (Actually, I’ve been to North Platte, probably not returning.)

Meditation and a Seven-Minute Mile

When I re-enlisted in the Army a dozen years ago, I had a goal of scoring 300, the maximum score, on the Army fitness test.  The test consists of pushups, situps and a two-mile run.  To score the maximum at 55 years old I needed to run two consecutive seven-minute miles.  I could run 7:30 but I wanted to run seven flat or even in the high sixes. 

I was a bicyclist and had not run for years, so I had lots of problems with my form.  The way I fixed my form, as well as I could, and got to my target speed was by running on a treadmill facing a full-length mirror. 

Unlike spot correction by a coach, watching my arms, legs, shoulders and torso for most of the run showed me deficiencies and allowed me to practice running as I should. 

Three years ago after I left the Army I started meditating. I am not sure what silly objections I had to meditating for the first six decades of my life, but now it is a daily habit. When I meditate, I am very aware there is no moment but now. Whatever my plans or memories, the only moment I can live in is this one.  This very moment. 

During meditation, when I leave this moment in my mind, my breath brings me back. And I am in the present, alive to now.  Meditation, in that way, is like that running mirror for my spiritual life.  I start running and see my torso tilt to the left or my right knee moving laterally or my elbows swinging out. 

As I run, I straighten my back, I pull in the stray elbow, I focus on making my stride straight as my speed increases. 

And I breath.

Meditation pulls my mind into alignment with my spirit. The animal/spirit amphibian that is my daily reality comes closest to unity when I focus on my breath and am aware that there is no other moment than this one. 

The mirror for running and meditation as a mirror for my spirit came late in my life, but not too late.

The Difference of a Decade: Soldier in Iraq to Street Protester

At the beginning of 2010 I was a soldier on active duty with the United States Army deployed to Iraq.  As this decade ends I am a Democratic activist who has participated in more than 100 protests since November of 2016. 

In 2010, I was a member of a Church. In 2018, after Jews were massacred in a Pittsburgh, I joined a synagogue.

In 2010 I was 56 years old—old enough to cause problems with an adoption that ultimately did not work out. But we did adopt two more kids in the years after I returned from Iraq. 

At the beginning of 2010, I had traveled to almost 30 countries on five continents, but had never traveled outside America unless on business or Army deployment. In 2011, we went to Haiti to meet a boy we hoped to adopt. It did not work out but we are still supporting him in Haiti.  After that trip to Haiti, I traveled to more than 30 countries just to travel, not on business, civilian or military.

At the beginning of the decade I could read French and Ancient Greek and knew a few phrases in German.  In 2015, I started learning Russian. I took four semesters and reached my limit of fluency--I forget the vocabulary very quickly, but I remember the grammar.  Then in 2017, I started learning Hebrew. That was even more difficult. Adding two alphabets is a big change. 

In June 2015 I retired at age 62. I had worked weekends and summers since I was 12 and had not taken more than two weeks off since 1965 and ever since I had a laptop and a cell phone, often worked during my vacations. Since retiring I have not worked at all. 

The year after I retired in November 2016, I made the abrupt transition from former soldier to political activist.  I had never protested in my life. I enlisted during the Vietnam War and re-enlisted during the Iraq War.  But the I could see the end of democracy in the failed casino owner in the White House. I have been in the street protesting most weeks since 2016, more than 150 times.

At the beginning of this decade, I had never swam the length of a pool. In 2013, I started learning to swim. In 2014 I swam 2.4 miles in the Ohio River at the beginning of an Ironman Triathlon I finished in 17 hours and 36 minutes.

After I retired, I tried meditation and yoga. I now do yoga weekly and meditate daily. 

In 2010 I had never been to Israel or a Holocaust site. My third trip to Israel will be in the February of next year. I have visited Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buchenwald and many Holocaust museums and memorials in Israel and across Europe. 

Life remains a crazy adventure. 

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