What would you recommend to a complete alien to do on Earth, between his birth and his death? Suppose you’re going to meet a tiny little green man, who will naively ask you: “Hey, mate, what’s the thing with this Earth?”. What are the 25 things that would create for him an unforgettable, yet totally customized (as in specific to you, and only you) experience?
I know you’re used to much bigger lists on my blog, but this one is different. Its’ not a blogging challenge, nor a method to stretch my writing skills. It’s just an honest transcription of the answers to the question: “what do you want to do in your life?”. It may not be spectacular at all, but it is for real. It may not be complete, but you are here to give me more hints. It may not be the only list of things to do in your life on the Internet, but it’s mine. And you can grow your own list from it too.
Here’s what I’d say it’s worth doing between birth and death to a complete alien who just arrived here on Earth:
1. Fall in Love
As often as you can. Experience the abandon of yourself in front of something bigger than you and the object of your love altogether. Don’t actively look for it, but merely be prepared to receive it when it finds you.
2. Climb a Mountain
Everest will be fine. Of course, if you can’t do Everest, any mountain will do. Did it a few times and every time I descended I left a small part of me on that desert plateau. Now all I want is to get back again and rejoin it.
3. Make a Million Dollars
And spend it all. Did both and felt good. For me, this was the best way to get rid of the “money as a number” obsession. After you did this once, things will look very different. You’ll never be afraid of having and spending money.
4. Go Round the World by Plane
Did that too. Bucharest – Rome – Las Vegas – Los Angeles – Auckland – Bangkok – Vienna – Bucharest. Spent more than 45 hours in planes in less than 2 weeks but although I was tired as hell, it felt incredibly rewarding. The world is really small.
5. Fish with Your Bare Hands
Did this when I was a child, in a village in the middle of Romania. My parents used to leave me for the summer at my grand parents house, which was near a creek, 20 cm deep at most. We used to block one of the creek’s ways with sand, and while the other one was slowly drying we were picking small fish with our bare hands.
6. Learn a Foreign Language
Or maybe two or three. Try to depict the world for a few weeks using the new words you learned. In a magical way the world will be enriched just because you describe it in a different way. It’s like you re-create it every time you talk about it using different words in a different language.
7. Sail across the Ocean
Didn’t do it. Yet. But I’d love to be on a boat sailing across the Oceans. Waking up each day only to see the infinite water stretching in front of my eyes. Experiencing the bare confrontation with something hugely more powerful than me, yet able to become my ally.
8. Start Your Own Business
Like an outlet for doing more of what you want and creating more of what you love. I did it out of curiosity 10 years ago and still enjoying the benefits. It’s not only about being your own boss (although it feels incredibly good 🙂 ) but about taking more responsibility.
9. Have Kids
And raise them. It’s not what you can teach them, but mostly what you can learn from your kids. It seems that somehow along the way we lose the ability to enjoy life the way we used to. Kids are here to remind us that we’re here to enjoy life. Together.
10. Build a House
If it’s yours, even better. Building a house is a powerful maturity test. It’s far more difficult than it seems and it really changes some of your internal values. Didn’t do that yet, only witnessing it at some of my friends, but definitely something I want to do in this lifetime.
11. Take a Year Off from Work
I think they call this sabbatical. I did this after I sold my business, last year. Well, it wasn’t technically a year without work at all, because I started and maintained this blog. But since I don’t really call this work, I think it will do. Your entire life perspective shifts after one year off the hook.
12. Get Married
And the moment you don’t like it anymore, get a divorce. The way humankind is working nowadays, marriage is still a key type of relationship. Even if you crave for a much more open type of interaction, you can’t really get all its benefits until you experience all the joys and sorrows of marriage.
13. Write a Book
Any type of book. Whatever you feel the need to share. May be an ebook if you don’t have the time or resources to go for a printed one, but I think everybody should write a book in his lifetime. If only to let other people that he really lived and how.
14. Run a Marathon
Didn’t do this yet, but I crave for it. I don’t know why, but I feel like this is an important body milestone. Pushing the limits over what you think you can do, knowing that you did it.
15. Share a Dream with Somebody
Maybe it’s a house you want to build with your partner. Or traveling the world together. Whatever it is, if it’s a shared dream is really worth striving for it, even if – or especially if – it’s for your entire lifetime. Shared dreams are most of the time at the roots of our physical reality.
16. Completely Change Your Career
At least once. I did it twice so far, going from being a radio anchor to being an online entrepreneur and then a full time blogger. Don’t spend your precious time in the same boring job until you die, it’s not worth it. Yes, there is risk involved. Which is great!
17. Help a Completely Unknown Person
Have you ever thought how it is to go to someone you never met and help him? Sometimes without even letting him know? This is what I call an anonymous random act of kindness and I’ve done it more than once. Mostly for how it made me feel, I admit.
18. Don’t Talk for a Week
I didn’t do this but I want to do it. We’ve been trained to talk so much that we can’t rejoice silence anymore. Somehow, we replaced the unbiased, direct experience of life with second hand experiences through words. A week of silence should at least make the speaking fun again after you finish it.
19. Attend a Funeral
When I first attended a funeral I was too little so I didn’t quite understand what was going on. Only after I grasped some of the concepts of what we generally call death, I was able to fully understand it. It’s a celebration, not a mourning. This is why Zorba dances at funerals.
20. Live in a Complete Foreign Country for at Least a Week
Did that when I spent 7 days in Japan, without knowing the language and almost without anybody around speaking English. After all the frustration was gone it proved to be an incredible experience. We can interact and live in so many ways without spoken language and beyond it.
21. Plant a Tree
Did it so many times when I was a kid and was spending my summers at my grandparents in the country side. Did it again when I moved into a new house a few years ago. It’s like making a two-ways gift: you allow a life form to exist while receiving all the benefits of its existence.
22. Write a Poem
It’s not about literature here, no need to inspire millions with your words (but if it happens to do that, even better). Just let them flow through your soul and speak your feelings. When I was in my last year of college I wrote several hundreds poems but never showed them to anyone.
23. Climb the Highest Point in Your City
I don’t know why, but I’m addicted to this one. Everywhere I travel I look for the highest point and go there: Paris, Auckland, Tokyo, Vienna, Prague, they all have a tower structure. It gives me a fantastic feeling of freedom and “everything is possible” when I look at the cities from above.
24. Lose a Battle
Let go of something really important for you. It might be a person you love, or a thing you’re hanging on. Just let it flow away and continue to live your life. It will help you understand that your existence is not confined within the boundaries of a single person or a single thing.
25. Swim with the Dolphins
Didn’t do it yet, but I’m obsessed with dolphins. There is an unspeakable feeling of being free and at the same time shared in another dimension in this image, that I can almost get the shivers only by thinking at it. I also think it would become some sort of addiction once I’ll get to it.
What are your 25 things? What would you absolutely, unreservedly and unconditionally would want to do in your lifetime? Why? Share those dreams here, in the comments, or on your own blog. Just link back so I can discover you.
If you dream about something, let it out and dare do make it real.
Nice. U knw,I would love to travel the world, Especially Las vegas to gamble a lot. I saw it on Wishberg,too(Is it so popular?) as a wish http://www.wishberg.com/kulinshah/wish/426809225436041499, Anyways,I added it to my wishlist too!
i want to search the thing that i can do in my future and became a name in world every body knows me
hi, i just search on google , and this come up . Its really cool list you have here, dont mind if i use it 🙂 ? i am 20 and i want to do all these now, one by one .
It’s so excelent i will try do it all!
Why have you never showed your poems to anyone?
On a side note, I love your new avatar picture on Twitter.
I would replace “Fall in love” with “Love somebody” and “Lose a battle” with “Win a battle”. But then again, I’m from Venus 🙂 Totally agree on “Share a dream with somebody”.
We, the guys from Mars, are hard wired to win battles, so losing one every once in a while would be a useful experience. And “sharing a dream” is my favorite too. Also, the most difficult.
You sound very wise and understanding of the law of attraction. This list has helped me add to my list, so I thank you. The not talking for a week is a very interesting idea.
How do you just make a million dollars?
fall in love completly so you know what it really is to be able to love someone other then family.
know what you want to do in life.
parachuyte so you can feel teh endless limitations you can feeel when you freefall . take a road trip to wehrever you want to go in or have been wanting to. try to stay home one week and fix everything that there is to fix at home anything at all from cleaning it to fixing any missing tiles or anything but.
get some freinds toghether at one point in your life and look at what you have accomplished, meet 10 years later and see hoow you have improved or have changed.
find the person you really should be with whether its a friend or the person you fall in love with and marry.
vollunteer with you community to be able to help others and know there stories or talk to them for a little . take a camera and photograph your day to see what you do and what you miss from overlooking other things.
im in highschool and sitting in class i know there are alot of mistakes but tahnks for the list it has really lifted my mood even tho i was really depressed today it has given me a new perspective on waht i can accomplish during my life.
I have a bucket list too! So far it has 158 goals on it, I am working my way to 1000. My favorites are ‘Milk a Cow’, ‘Ride a Zipline’ and ‘Make a Coloring Book’. You can see my list at http://www.mslistologist.com Good Luck!!
I want to add: Build a product, Teach someone and make him/her ur student, Give a big money to someone who need it, Buy a gift for yourself without reasons, Be a manager one time at least on a team,…
I did some of stuff you said: Married, Live in foreign country for a week, Letting someone win,Helping stranger, And I must say you are right most of these stuff give me great memory and feel.
Good points, Riza: build a product and teach somebody are definitely something enriching 🙂 Not to mention “buy yourself a gift without reasons 😉
I agreed with all of them. Except I had to re-read #12 a few times because I found “And the moment you don’t like it anymore, get a divorce” offsetting.
If it’s definitely not working no matter the amount of effort, I can understand breaking it off. But to break it off *the moment* you don’t like it, sounds like giving up easily and/or like a person easy on commitment.
It’s meant like this: “the moment you realize you don’t like it anymore”. Emphasis the immediate action after you realize it’s not good for you, not a hasty decision.
Outstanding list and I defiantly will love to swim with the Dolphins .. 🙂
.-= Fatibony ´s last blog ..Life Choices; As we Start the Month Of December. =-.
Hi – this is a great list. I would probably change ‘plane’ in No.4 to ‘bicycle’. That way the world is a big and richly varied place. But that’s just me… 🙂 Most of the rest I would have on my list – the only ones I would have that would be for me would be: Write a symphony – Draw or paint someone’s portrait – Help someone achieve their potential – Be grateful every day.
Keep up the good work!
Euan
.-= Euan Bayliss´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
Hi Dragos, you are a blogging machine lately!
I read Jonny’s blog this morning about his last three months and I thought it was just awesome. Your 25 are all about experiences and not things. That’s the key point in my mind. We should be collecting experiences and not things. Great job.
.-= Stephen – Rat Race Trap´s last blog ..Hugh Macleod and Creativity =-.
Great point, these aren’t really “things” 😉 Thanks for being around, Stephen!
Hehe…
Nice the things to do are true and best but if they have been in correct sequence then would have looked much better .
Like number 9 Have kids and then 12 Get Married …
Have done few things need to do remaining
.-= Ashish Kalmegh´s last blog ..Programming made easy with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 =-.
Interesting you noticed this, and yes, it was exactly like this in real life too. 🙂
Hey, if you’re going to attend a funeral, shouldn’t you also check out a wedding? I’ve never been to one but it seemed like a good balance 😉
Well, Henri, as I said in the intro, those 25 things are something really customized, I’m speaking from my own life experience. I’ve been to a few weddings so far, and those I remember the best are my own (had 2 until now). To be honest, I wouldn’t go there again…
Thank you very much this will be very helpfull
If you say so…
This is so inspiring. In my short lists now, I want to do the number 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 14, 17 and 25.
I love dolphins! Haha 🙂
.-= Syuxx´s last blog ..What Will You Do Today? =-.
Feel free to do them. In the process, you could also blog about them, letting us know how it went 🙂
Its appreciating one that you made “Fall in love” to the top of the list. I am not so lucky though to make it yet 🙁
.-= Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..7 Reasons Why Should You Start Guest Blogging =-.
Just be ready, it doesn’t show any specific signs, until it hits you 🙂
What a post, what an inspiration.
Absolutely awesome, these are all things that you and I share on out bucket list for life.
I actually plan tp spend 2 weeks in silence next March when I visit Napal. It going to be awesome.
Great work.
.-= Jonny | thelifething.com´s last blog ..3 Months In The Life Of A Travelling Entrepreneur =-.
Nepal sounds fantastic 🙂 I would really like to go there. In fact, I think I just decided I will. Thanks for the hint.
This is a really inspiring list. Many of these things are activities I have been interested in trying out myself. Only a few I have actually done (“Write A Poem,” “Fall in Love,” “Attend a Funeral/Wake,” “Take A Year Off From Work,” and “Help A Completely Unknown Person.”) I am young though so I still have some time!
.-= Steven Handel´s last blog ..Grudges And Forgiveness =-.
It’s not a contest 🙂 I would be curious what are YOUR 25 things, not if you did what I did…
Oh, I certainly don’t think of it as a contest!
If I was to write my own list I would probably include: Record A Music Album, Get A Graduate Degree, Go On A Meditative Retreat, Volunteer At A Church, Join An Activist Group, and Die Happy. 🙂
.-= Steven Handel´s last blog ..Create A Progressive Timeline To Better Envision Your Goals =-.
wow, that’s great 🙂 That’s what I’m talking about! Record A Music Album, this one surely rang some bells: when I was 24, I was the manager of a band called Grigore Ureche Muzicala (an untranslatable Romanian word game) and that was one of my best times in my life. Good luck with that!