My Bucket List is Empty, Thank Goodness

Why Befriending a Backyard Tree is More Important than Seeing the Pyramids

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Two tremendous, well-shaped trees at Mount Hope Farm, Bristol, RI. Author

“Why do you smoke pot?” I asked my new friend. We were sitting on a low retaining wall along the front of the drivers’ ed school, watching the traffic on Washington Street while enjoying a short break from a lesson on “Signs, Signals, and Road Markings.” We’d met some weeks earlier in the classroom, each of us intent on obtaining a learners permit and finally being allowed to get behind the wheel of a car.

He wasn’t smoking now but I knew from previous conversations that he enjoyed it, and I was genuinely curious why. I believed smoking was bad—like, morally bad. Unlike my wayward older brother, who partied and partook of beer and cigarettes and who-knows-what-else, I was bashful and timid, and kind of a puritan on subjects like sex and alcohol.

I probably assumed at the time—based largely on the friction between my parents and my brother—that only those of “low” character smoked, and I was confused about my new friend, who certainly didn’t come across as a stoner or a loser; he was an intelligent, unusually composed young man, calm and wise-seeming.

Since this exchange happened over forty years ago, I don’t recall my friend’s exact words, but his response to my question was unforgettable.

He pointed to a lone tree standing at the edge of the schoolyard across the road.

“You see how round the crown of that tree is?” (I’ll just go ahead and assign words to our exchange.)

“Yeah, I see it.” I didn’t really know what a crown was, but I could guess.

“When I’m high,” he said. “I notice things like that. I’m intensely aware of how perfectly symmetrical the branches are.” He traced the shape of the tree in the air with one hand. “It’s so striking the way it stands out against the blue sky. The whole tree is amazing, really; it’s all just so present. Almost radiant. Like a miracle from God.”

All I could say was, “Huh,” not having ever found myself in such a conversation.

This essay is not about pot, or stimulants of any sort. It’s about waking up. I was not high when I was awakened to the beauty of a tree—and my friend wasn’t high when he told me about it, either. To this day, when I notice the shapes of the crowns of trees—which I do often—I think of the boy who first pointed this feature out to me.

From the State of South Dakota, Dept. of Agriculture website

I was recently chatting with a friend about stimulants—magic mushrooms, gummies, that sort of thing—and the common desire to intensify one’s experience. That’s what reminded me of my pal from driver’s ed, and it also got me thinking about bucket lists and the desire to “collect” memorable events. This attachment to one’s life as something precious that must be maximized for enjoyment before one dies, before it’s “too late.”

I think the problem with the attachment to bucket lists is that it’s grounded in the view that this one short life is all there is. What desperation this view leads to! What clinging and grasping and craving!

Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Happiness can be attained by letting go, including letting go of your ideas about happiness. You imagine that certain conditions are necessary to your happiness, but deep looking will reveal to you that those notions are the very things standing in the way of happiness and are making you suffer.”

Notions such as the importance of “living fully” and of achieving certain goals by life’s end; notions such as that expressed in the statement, I want my life to have meant something.

In order to find true peace with life, death must be seen as something other than the end of one’s only chance to find happiness or to make a difference, as the end of one’s allotted time to matter. And in order to do this, the very idea of self must be seen differently. We are so attached to ourselves, our bodies, our minds, our views and memories and relationships. Our accomplishments, our experiences, our legacy.

If we could only begin to see, really see, that this one lifetime is like a leaf on a tree. Not the most important thing, but rather part of something bigger, and even more important. Or at least equally as important. The leaf is part of the tree, correct? And therefore, the tree is also part of the leaf. One is the other. But the leaf isn’t only the tree; it’s also the air that it produces, the rain it absorbs, and the soil that it eventually becomes. Just as we are not only this body; we are everything that this body comes from and everything it returns to. When we fully understand that, at our core, a type of letting go happens.

Both of my bucket list items in one photo! By sutirta budiman on Unsplash

Question: How could the universe have existed for 14 billion years without us having even existed, and then all of a sudden, this single, short-lived sliver of consciousness called a human being, called me, is something so profoundly important that its demise is a tragedy? No, I think there is much, much more to existence than the human body, which may be intelligent and able to think about its own consciousness, but is still just a formation of cells, a cooperation between nanoscopic elements of which science still knows so little.

This is where faith comes in, of course. But not the kind of faith that makes up stories it desperately needs to believe about conscious creators, loving deities, or angry father gods. No, I mean just the simple faith that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves, something that has existed forever and will continue to exist forever.

I guess you could call it God. The difference is negligible, isn’t it? Until we start anthropomorphizing this greatness, this everything, and seeing it as separate from ourselves. And really, I think one key to changing our view of self is to come to understand that even saying we are a “part” of this largeness is a misleading use of language. We are it.

We are the universe. We are God.

I understand that statements like that—“We are one,” “We are the universe”—can be unhelpful. Because generally when we’re using our mind, when we’re thinking, we’re thinking from a center, from a sense of self. It is “I” who is thinking. So, naturally the concept of “self” and the concept of “I am you” don’t easily jive. I’ve kind of figured out at this point in my own spiritual journey that you can’t honestly say “I am one with everything” until you’ve experienced that truth deeply in your core. So, saying it may make sense to yourself, but not necessarily to others. That’s why, though I did say it here, I hesitated. That’s the difficulty of teaching unity.

I can’t tell you that you are one with the universe. You can’t even tell yourself that if you haven’t it experienced already. It likely won’t produce any effect beyond making you feel that you’re somehow missing the lesson, that you’re not smart enough, or concentrated enough, or good enough to understand deeper, higher truths. Well, don’t believe it! It’s not like that. It takes steady practice and insight to move beyond our very habituated way of seeing from a central self and learning the subtle art of letting go of that self while also not annihilating the concept of one’s larger wholeness. Of coming to an understanding that you are it, without the you.

For me, when I can touch this truth, I feel that I can relax, breathe a sigh of relief; there’s no more hurry to experience everything on my bucket list before it’s too late, there’s no need to experience everything on my bucket list at all, because I already am everything.

Honestly, I no longer think I need to ride a balloon over the rolling Green Mountains (my personal bucket-list item for the longest time), or witness herds of Wildebeest galloping across the Serengeti (an African safari was another), because there is a tall old Norway maple near my house. To the untrained eye it may appear to be just another tree, but I know it’s more than that; it’s a miracle, a “gift from God.” One that I can visit every time I walk out my door.

And I don’t even need to get high or check it off my bucket list.

Me and the miraculous Norway maple in my yard. Author

BOOKS MENTIONED

Thich Nhat Hanh. You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment. Shambhala, 2010

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