What's important on your bucket list?

The most important thing on my bucket list is to live a life I can be proud of.

Today's blog is not about Sea Shepherd - or maybe it is. It is not about veganism - or maybe it is. It is not even about me - or maybe it is. It might be about you - or maybe it isn't. That choice, dear reader, is yours and yours alone.

I was at the Requiem Mass this morning in celebration of the life of one of the most incredible men ever to have influenced my own life, Jan Wladyslaw Stepek. 

His son, Martin, delivered a heartfelt, moving and eloquent eulogy that left us all in no doubt that Jan had lived not just a good life, he lived a great life. Standing room only in the church gave testament to how many of us knew that already, but what a wonderful and very welcome reminder Martin's fine words were to us all.

It shouldn't take much to remind any of us just how short our time on this planet really is. It shouldn't take anything at all to remind us to use that time for good. William Arthur Dunkerley writing under the pen-name John Oxenham gave us this most important observation in his poem, The Pilgrim Way:

But once I pass this way, and then no more,

But once and then the silent door

Swings on its hinges, opens … closes

And then no more I pass this way,

So while I may, with all my might

I will essay, sweet comfort and delight

To all I meet upon the Pilgrim way,

For no man travels twice the great highway

That climbs through darkness up to light

Through night, to day.

You only get one shot at getting the whole of your life right and none of us know how long that shot is going to be.  So make sure a life to be proud of is at the top of your bucket list.