On my "To do" list

I’ve heard the phrase “Bucket list” thrown around a lot lately, clearly the movie has had some impact on people, and Jack Nicholson does do ornery rather well.

For myself, I have two very different bucket lists that I’m working from in my mind. The first one is the public one, the one I throw out to anyone who will listen, about the things I want to do at least once, sometime in my life, common things like Travel to Paris and go through the Louvre Museum, go for a hot air balloon ride (hopefully that one will be accomplished sometime in the next year), go for a helicopter ride, learn Spanish and maori and go for a boat cruise around the Pacific (theres one going in June next year, if I can save up that much money).

I remember having a conversation with some girls while I was at uni about all the things we wanted to do, see and experience and one of the girls put forward the idea of going to Oxford or Cambridge university. I didn’t think anything of it until I ran into her a year or two ago to find that she had done just that – spent a year at one of those universities. Good on her I say.

Then theres the other bucket list, the one that I don’t talk about for fear acquaintances and critics will try to talk me out of doing what I want to do. I shouldn’t put so much stock into what other people think, because they won’t ever have to walk in my shoes, but when their negativity towards my goals comes from a place of concern for me, I tend to end up feeling guilty about the things I want to do.

One of the goals I have in the back of my mind, which I want to do, mainly because it would be so exceedingly difficult for me, which would make it so worthwhile, is to do a 40 day fast solely on water. As much water as I want but just water. No I’m not claiming superhuman status like Jesus or other religious leaders. But for me it’s the ultimate test against myself, proving to myself that I would do it. That’s nearly 6 weeks of no food. If I could discipline myself to abstain from food, I think I could discipline myself to do anything I wanted.

I would never have conceived of the possibility of doing such a feat, but I have went to a seminar of a man – Don Tolman, who not once but twice fasted on water for 40 days. He went away into the mountains to do it and when he finished he drank 1L of pure fresh grape juice and ran the equivalent of a marathon, which was all documented by a film crew. I should try to find it on the net, come to think of it. He did say that its harder for women to fast long term.

I’m not sure what the difference is between fasting and starvation exactly, I think that they’re probably similar except that one is voluntary and the other is not. I would think that the outlook for the two would be different – one being more positive and the other looking towards death.

Don also had an alternative to the long fast, which was 20 days on water, in order to allow any parasites and worms living in the body to die, followed by a mega cleanse – bentonite clay alternating every hour with psyllium and flax seeds for 12 hours on the 20th day.

Fasting is not the only thing on my secret bucket list, but it’s the one I keep coming back to again and again. Its just so do-able. Really the only thing stopping me from doing it – is me.