My CMS The View from a New City

The concept of a bucket list is something to think about. One obvious purpose for life is to gain experience. However, I have my doubts about the ability of human beings to judge which experiences are valuable. What is it that we should spend time and life on? Take for example those persons who already have more money than they can spend in a lifetime. Many of them continue to play the game of accumulating more of what they already have too much of. From time to time, I have reflected on the case of the California congressman who took bribes to buy a large house and a fancy car. I wondered if he ever thought about how impressed people would be with him and his beautiful home and fancy car once they discovered he took bribes to pay for them. Christmas gifts are another example of things that promise more happiness than they provide.

Perhaps the most valuable experiences are those those that come to us, unsought, from the mortal conditions of life: not new landscapes but seeing itself; not success but struggle; both pleasure and pain; love, fascination, loneliness and boredom; fear and anguish; and many other ordinary experiences you can’t get in a state of immortal bliss.

Maybe Eve had it right after all. Maybe we all shouted for joy in the pre-mortal council, because we weren’t going to spend our lives in the Garden of Eden. We knew we were going to get to pull a few weeds.