A Facebook friend recently drew my attention to a New York times piece by David Brooks, who wrote about his moral bucket list.
As I read the opening lines and paragraphs, a chord was struck. Brooks writes about meeting people who do valuable moral work and that despite achieving a reasonable level of success in his career, he hadn’t achieved the generosity of spirit he wanted to – resume virtues vs. eulogy virtues.
Ding, ding, ding.
Bells went off in my head. My own midlife crisis (and maybe this entire blog project) is born out of that same feeling – that I want to be doing more, I feel I should be doing more. There’s great internal conflict in me between those feelings and the “responsible” ones. Those feelings of making sure I launch my kids properly with mostly-paid-for university. The feelings that if I don’t keep climbing the ladder, then I won’t have a nest egg for my own future. The two sets of feelings often do battle. Am I justifying what I do by hiding behind a sense of “doing what is right for us”? Am I just too scared to break the mould and start something new, untried and risky?
Have I slipped into what Brooks calls “moral mediocrity”? How humbling it is to realize that the answer is probably yes. Somehow, somewhere, many years ago, I lost the drive to do more than not rock the boat. I’ve succumbed to North American middle-class malaise.
Sure, I give to charities. I support friends and colleagues in their personal fundraising. I use my talents at a large multi-national company, and am pretty good at what I do. I use other talents at church, to support an organization I believe does good things. But I don’t actually do anything. I haven’t taken a real risk in years. I’m good at making excuses for that. I can’t just throw away everything I’ve built.
I’m the only wage-earner in my family. I like my “things”. My kids need me. But those excuses only go so far in the clear light of day. Part of me yearns for this change. The other part says, “wait until the kids are done school”.
Is that just another excuse to keep me from having to do anything now?
Maybe. But if nothing else, it’s a good line in the sand. In just a few years (well, seven!), I will have accomplished a huge goal. In theory, at least, I will have put three kids through university. To me, that feels like the right time to really rethink my own moral bucket list. I’m gearing up for that to be the time when I can commit to something out of the box – pushing through my fear and doing something that really makes a difference.
I don’t know what it will be yet, but I do believe the right opportunity and I will eventually connect, and there will be a moment – a moment at exactly the perfect time – when the metaphorical light goes on and I just “know.” Until then, I’ll keep asking questions and searching for answers, because I long to fill that empty space inside me that knows there’s another chapter yet to be written.
How do you fulfill your moral bucket list?
