In July 2013, in a Facebook post, Karine Champagne announced that she had just achieved three goals on her bucket list: going to Walt Disney, completing a half-ironman and starting a running club.
At the time, the concept of bucket lists – these lists of dreams to achieve before dying – was a hit on social networks.
But for Karine Champagne, it was not a fashion statement. She always set big goals for herself. “When I first read the news, the weekend at TVA, it had been on my bucket list since I was 7 or 8 years old,” says the former news reader, now a coach and author.
When her doctor prescribed physical exercise in 2011, Karine Champagne listened to him. 100 %. She created a movement of 35,000 women willing to use exercise as an antidepressant. She qualified for the triathlon world championships. She completed an Ironman. She went to Kilimanjaro, Greenland, Machu Picchu. “Empty your bucket list quickly,” she even wrote in her biography on Twitter.
“Check, check, check,” says Karine Champagne. I vibrated in accomplishment. »
Maybe it will come back to her one day, but today, at the dawn of fifty, Karine Champagne no longer feels the need to run a marathon, nor to sleep in a tent pitched in the middle of Greenland. “The important thing for me right now is to feel good,” she says.
Life circumstances change. And our dreams and goals change too.
Professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Valerie Tiberius wrote a column about it in the Washington Post. The title ? “Enough with the bucket list. Adopt the chuck it list, or the list of projects to throw in the trash. The philosopher says that her father, on his 75th birthday, announced to his loved ones that he was abandoning the idea of learning Spanish. He was a little disappointed, she wrote, but above all relieved.
“The problem with the bucket list is that it tends to be a bit static,” explains Valerie Tiberius. You put something on the list, and the only way to eliminate it is to do it. » We imagine that growing older means progressing on the same path, but “interests, abilities, those around you change,” she says. And all of these changes impact the goals that are most meaningful to us.”
Louise Dupuis, 64, already had a well-stocked bucket list: learning Spanish (she did too!), playing the saxophone, volunteering abroad, producing giant paintings, being thin… At 40, she had a stroke. And in her fifties, she accompanied her parents through illness until their death. All this made him reconsider his goals. “My bucket list is almost non-existent,” notes Louise. I prefer to seize opportunities as they arise and to suit my interests and tastes of the day. »
The bucket list is often made up of new experiences, like skydiving or seeing the sunset in Bali. However, research shows that humans have an intrinsic preference for things and people that are familiar to them, points out psychiatry professor Richard A. Friedman in a column published in The Atlantic this year.
It is not a question of spitting on novelty, which can be exciting and provide a lot of pleasure. But “novelty seeking is most valuable when we use it to discover the things and people we love,” writes Richard A. Friedman. “When you find them, dig into them. »
How do we know which of our dreams really matter? Christine Grou advises taking some time out and thinking about your desires, your desires, your needs. The bucket list can contain projects that are dear to us and that give us pleasure, says Christine Grou, according to whom we cannot live without dreams and projects. But the bucket list can also list unattainable challenges, dictated by an imperative, which risks cultivating disappointment.
Karine Champagne still has many dreams. Create a movement around the pleasure of living and growing old. Give a second wind to your book. Continue to ride fat bikes and hike, enjoy her RV with her husband, go see the sea. “I may also have discovered that I can also be very happy and very accomplished while sitting around doing nothing,” she concludes.
