Tag Archives: Honesty

An Alternative Bucket List

Because a life well-lived isn’t just about the peaks—it’s about the depth.

Introduction

The modern concept of a “bucket list” gained widespread popularity after the 2007 film The Bucket List, in which two terminally ill men set out to accomplish a series of grand adventures before they die. Since then, the phrase has become shorthand for any life goals meant to be ticked off before one’s final breath.

But somewhere along the way, the bucket list became a billboard. An itinerary of spectacle. Climb Everest. Go skydiving. See the Northern Lights. Write a novel. It became less about meaning and more about milestones. Less about living, and more about doing.

This list is an invitation to go the other way.

What follows is an alternative bucket list: a set of quiet, human, soul-nourishing challenges. No air miles required. No audience necessary. These are not tasks for applause, but dares for depth.

Self-Honesty and Inner Courage

  1. Admit to yourself something you’ve been in denial about.
    Start small or start seismic. Just start.
  2. Look at yourself in the mirror for one uninterrupted minute.
    No judgment, no posing. Just look.
  3. Forgive yourself for something you’ve held against yourself for years.
    You can still hold yourself accountable. But release the hatred.
  4. Change your mind about something important.
    Growth is not betrayal.
  5. Spend a whole day without trying to be ‘productive’.
    You’re still valuable.

Boundary and Boldness Practice

  1. Say no to someone’s request for a favour.
    Without apology. With respect.
  2. Stand up for something you believe in that isn’t popular.
    Even if your voice shakes.
  3. Let someone help you.
    Even if you feel you don’t deserve it.
  4. Tell someone how you really feel.
    Especially the good things.
  5. Let go of a goal you only pursued to please others.
    Make space for what you want.

Compassion and Connection

  1. Give money, food, or time to someone who needs it more than you.
    And don’t post about it.
  2. Have a meaningful, non-verbal exchange with an animal.
    It counts if it makes you feel something.
  3. Offer forgiveness to someone who never asked for it.
    Not for them. For you.
  4. Hold space for someone else’s story without interrupting.
    Listen until the end.
  5. Send a message to someone you miss, just because.
    They don’t have to reply.

Wonder and Awareness

  1. Come to your own conclusion about something most people accept without question.
    Even if you change your mind again later.
  2. Watch clouds move or stars appear, doing absolutely nothing else.
    Be a witness to the sky.
  3. Touch something natural and really notice it.
    Bark. Sand. Petals. Your own skin.
  4. Spend time in silence—not as punishment, but as presence.
    Let the stillness speak.
  5. Write a letter to yourself 10 years ago. Or 10 years from now.
    And maybe don’t send it.

Closing Thoughts

None of these challenges require wealth, a passport, or even much time. But they do ask for you. Your presence. Your willingness. Your inner gaze.

Try one. Try three. Make up your own. But whatever you do, let your life be more than a checklist of spectacles. Let it be a tapestry of moments that actually changed you.

You don’t need to leave the planet. Just show up on it.

What would your own alternative bucket list look like?

Systemic Gaslighting: Let’s Finally Say It Out Loud

You Know It, I Know It: Systemic Gaslighting Is Real

Let’s stop pretending this isn’t happening.

You know the feeling. You go to the GP or A&E with something serious, something that’s quite literally threatening your health or your life—and you get fobbed off. Not just dismissed, but unacknowledged. It’s as if your suffering never even entered the room. I once went through a period where due to my dysphagia (difficulty swallowing foods), I couldn’t swallow anything—not even liquids—and three different doctors didn’t just ignore the urgency. They didn’t even acknowledge that not eating or drinking might be life-threatening.

That’s not a misunderstanding. That’s gaslighting at a structural level.

We don’t always use that word in this context, but maybe it’s time we did. Because the plausible deniability this system thrives on? It’s wearing thin. It’s implausible now. And yet the more glaring the denial becomes, the more we’re made to feel crazy for seeing it.

When the system fails you repeatedly, when it actively erodes your trust in your own perception, it doesn’t feel like negligence. It feels like being crushed. Slowly, deliberately. With no admission of force.

And if you’re neurodivergent? It’s a whole extra layer of hell. I’m autistic. I have social phobia. I don’t perform distress the way they expect. I don’t cry on cue. I don’t shout. I process. And because I process, I’m read as cold, or fine, or “not that bad.”

So I mask. I over-explain. I try to predict what they want from me, how to appear distressed in a way they’ll believe. But it always feels off. Like I’m being baited into dishonesty just to prove my honesty. And that makes them feel justified in writing me off.

This is what systemic gaslighting looks like:

  • They act like they care.
  • They position themselves as your advocate.
  • But every policy, every interaction, every flicker of body language says: “We’re not spending money on you if we can help it.”

I’ve warned others before. Told them: don’t be fooled by the performance of care. If you have the strength, call it out in the moment. Name the evasion. Ask for honesty. Demand respect. But know that they have tactics too. And they’re good at them.

So what keeps me going? Partly survival instinct. Partly the sheer disgust at how far we’ve allowed this to go. But mostly: the knowledge that it doesn’t have to be this way. That somewhere under the mountains of bureaucracy and gluttony and cruelty, there’s a version of the world where institutions actually listen. Where they respond with compassion, not scripts. Where people aren’t punished for needing help.

And until that world is real, I’ll keep writing. Even if no one hears it right now, the truth is here, in black and white.

You know it. I know it. Let’s stop pretending.