What I am most Proud of

I got asked today what I am most proud of and I wasn’t able to give a great answer on the spot. What I said was that I am proud of my ability to build relationships. I was told that my answer was too corporate and not personal enough. So I came home and I did some thinking and this is what I came up with:

I am most proud of the fact that I do not have a bucket list. I choose to treat every experience in my life as an opportunity to achieve deeper connections with humanity and the world. To truly relate one must be fully open to be changed and altered by experience. When we live according to a list we are more concerned with checking things off the list than we are with being open to the change that the experience causes within us. In failing to relate the world becomes a giant fun fair where the candy floss has more air than substance.

I have a friend who has listed, “living with a family in India” on his bucket list; one thing that he needs to accomplish before he dies. People are not tourist attractions. If you live with people and relate to them profoundly it will change you! Everything on your list might change if you are open to the experiences that life throws at you. You might fall in love in India, you might decide to stay, you might never want to go back, but as long as it is something to endure to achieve a glorious checkmark on your list you will fail to experience what it means to live and connect with people.

If you saw the movie “The Bucket List” what you might remember is that for the main character it was easier to jump out of airplanes, hunt tigers and drive motorcycles than it was to walk up to his estranged daughter’s front door, ring the doorbell and say “I’m sorry”.

I’m most proud of the fact that I have rung that doorbell more times than I care to remember and had my heart broken too many times to count but I choose to connect profoundly with people and I choose to face the shadow side of my relationships with others and myself. It is better to mend a broken heart than it is to polish a perfect stone. Relating is hard work for me, possibly for everyone, but I only have my own experience to judge that.

I have jumped out of airplanes and climbed mountains and I have found that it is harder to face the reality of relating than it is to run a marathon. Life, for me, is not an endurance test.

This doesn’t stop me from having fun. I love to ski, to hike, to play classical guitar, listen to Opera, to play pirates with my nieces and nephews, deep intellectual debates and reading Russian novels. I love to travel and see new places but these are not the aims of my life. If I go nowhere else, if I never hear or play music again, or read another book, it will be enough to have risked loving and risked being loved.

So perhaps my answer is still too corporate, but I am most proud of my ability to build and maintain relationship and, for me, that is a deeply personal answer.