The past few weeks were very interesting ones for Colleen and I. We had the opportunity to take a 20-day repositioning cruise from Vancouver to Fort Lauderdale, including a transit of the Panama Canal. A visit to the Panama Canal has been on my “bucket list” for a long, long time. In addition to being a fascinating adventure, it also felt great to check this one off my bucket list.

A bucket list is quite a beautiful thing. Whether it’s an actual written list, or an intangible one in your mind or your heart, it identifies those things you look forward to accomplishing. And it can be added to as new dreams are formed or reduced as we check items off once completed. It is alive – not static!!

One of our Club members recently sent me a thought provoking note. It was a clip of the 1950’s song “Enjoy Yourself” by Doris Day. You remember – “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think …”. The lyrics remind us that if we don’t make the most of each day and what we are doing, we may find it too late to do many of the things we have always wanted to do. This is the same theme that is at the core of the 2007 film “The Bucket List” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. We watched them as two cancer survivors who set out on an adventure to do many of the things that they never got around to doing before their life-threatening illnesses. It’s a good reminder that none of us has any guarantees on the time we have left.

So, the motto “Carpe Diem – Seize the Day” that was profiled in the 1989 movie “Dead Poet’s Society”, starring Robin Williams, is a very appropriate way to concentrate on one’s bucket list. Do you have a bucket list? What’s on it? Are you making any progress on it?

During our trip, we encountered a number of people who were using wheelchairs and walkers to get around. In spite of their physical restrictions and limitations, they were still squeezing what they could out of each day – and possibly working on their bucket list.

Carpe Diem! Don’t wait too long to do those things that you have wanted to do. And if some of those things can be a part of our PROBUS Club program, don’t be afraid to let us know. There’s a good chance that other members may be thinking the same thing!!

“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One  must never, for whatever, turn his back on life.”

Eleanor Roosevelt              

Jim McKinlay,
President