It Is Time to Start Working on My Travel Wish List

I have never liked the term “bucket list.” Maybe it is because the phrase has always felt a little too focused on the end. Things to do before you die. Places to see before time runs out. Experiences to collect before you kick the proverbial bucket.

I prefer travel wish list. A wish list feels hopeful. It looks forward. It is filled with places I want to see, experiences I want to have, people I want to meet, foods I want to taste, landscapes I want to stand in front of, and moments I cannot possibly imagine yet.

My travel wish list has been growing for most of my life. Recently, though, the death of a dear friend made me look at that list differently. Loss has an uncomfortable way of changing our relationship with time.

We all know intellectually that life is finite. We know there are no guarantees about how many years any of us will have. We hear all the familiar advice about making the most of today, appreciating what we have, and not putting things off until someday. Then someone you love dies, and suddenly those ideas no longer feel philosophical. They feel personal.

My friend’s death made me think about all the things we assume there will be time for later. The trip we will take someday. The place we have always wanted to see. The friend we need to visit. The experience we keep postponing until life settles down, the timing is better, work is less demanding, finances are different, the kids are older, or retirement finally arrives.

Of course, some dreams really do have to wait. Life comes with responsibilities, limitations, and seasons when certain things are simply not possible. But I have started to wonder how easily waiting for the right time can become simply waiting.

There will always be another reason not to go. There may not always be another chance.

That realization does not make me want to race around the world frantically checking destinations off a list. If anything, it makes me want to travel more intentionally. I want to look at the places that have lived in my imagination for years and ask myself why they are still only there.

I want to stop treating every dream as though it automatically belongs to some distant version of my life. I want to take the trip while I can still hike the trail, climb the stairs, wander the streets, taste the food, meet the people, and fully experience where I am.

I also want to say yes to more opportunities to travel with people I love. Sometimes I want to go simply because there is a place in this enormous world that has been calling to me for reasons I cannot entirely explain.

Grief has reminded me of something else too, experiences do not disappear when they end. The places we have been become stories. The people we traveled with become part of those stories. A photograph can return us instantly to a particular afternoon, a ridiculous mishap, a meal, a conversation, or a view we did not realize at the time would become precious.

Those memories become part of the life we carry forward. Maybe that is why losing someone makes time feel different. You become acutely aware that a lifetime is made up of a finite number of ordinary days, and we get to decide, at least in part, what we do with them.

I still refuse to call it a bucket list. I am not traveling because I am chasing death. I am traveling because I am chasing life.

There are still places I want to stand, roads I want to wander, cultures I want to experience, people I want to know, stories I want to hear, and moments I want to share with the people who matter to me.

My travel wish list is long, and I hope it always will be. But I think it is time to start working on it a little more deliberately.

Not because life is ending, but because life is happening.

So here is my challenge to you: think about your own travel wish list. What is the place you keep saying you want to see someday? What destination has been sitting quietly in the back of your mind, waiting for the right time?

Maybe it is time to bring that place a little closer to reality.

What location is next on your travel wish list?

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