As he writes: “It’s only by accepting our finitude that we can step into a truly authentic relationship with life.” Earlier this year, the journalist and self-improvement writer Oliver Burkeman published a book entitled Four Thousand Weeks, which is roughly the life-expectancy for the average westerner.īurkeman reconfigured our allotted time in weeks, rather than about 80 years, because it centres attention on life’s shocking brevity. Perhaps the bucket list performs a normative role on what to do.”Īn appointment with death, which after all is the one certainty we all have to confront, does tend to focus the mind on what it means to be alive.
People often say in situations of dying or bereavement that they wish there were manuals to guide them on how they should be feeling. “I wonder if it hasn’t become like diamond rings for engagements or the sudden rise in gender-reveal parties. Photograph: Alexander Kuznetsov/Reutersĭamon believes bucket lists – with their familiar tropes of swimming with dolphins – are more often about conformity than transgression, creating an expectation of how we ought to live life large. The aurora borealis, or northern lights, viewed at Torassieppi, Finland. But that may be a little bit more existentialist than the West Mercia force care to get on three-squad-car assignments. They could have argued, presumably, that transgression would lose its meaning if they went easy on people with terminal illness. Apparently, he told the officers of his precarious grasp on life, but they were undeterred. “There can be a sense that if you’re going to die, the worst is about to happen, you’re untouchable,” she says.Įxcept, of course, three police cars turned up at Meekcom’s house to arrest him.
Helen Damon, a counselling psychologist who specialises in dying and bereavement, notes that there is something “godlike and enthralling to have knowledge of one’s death”, which in turn can lead to acts of transgression. There is even the Bucket List travel company. Typically they involve flying to far-off places or high-adrenaline pastimes like skydiving. There are endless lists of bucket lists available online, so named because they are a compilation of experiences that one should undergo before kicking the bucket. “Have you never wanted to moon a speed camera?” he asked one of the arresting officers. The act of baring his bottom to a traffic enforcement camera, Meekcom told the police, was an item on his “bucket list”.
The key detail, though, is that Meekcom is terminally ill, having been diagnosed with multiple system atrophy. It sounds as though he’d managed to perform a contortionist manoeuvre at the wheel but in fact he stopped the car and got out while his wife went to buy some bread. It was revealed last week that a retired lecturer named Darrell Meekcom had been arrested for indecent exposure and dangerous driving after he mooned a speed camera.