My Summer Bucket List

Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is be content

While in Gilbert, Arkansas, for a weekend in late June, I was hit with the clarity of all that is good—the outdoors, working towards something, being surrounded by love and care. Helping set up a small wedding in a National Park will do this to a person. I spent a lot of time thinking, “this is what matters.” 

Capitalism likes to convince us that superfluous things matter. I’m imagining capitalism wandering around a grocery store and picking up “the incessant pressure to buy things, accumulate capital, and achieve more” as it’s preferred peanut butter brand. No, this isn’t a preference for a system of oppression. It is a necessary tenent of how capitalism functions.

I want to be happy with the simplicity of life. I want to stop wanting more. Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is be content. In a society that overwhelms us with the expectation of seeking more at every opportunity, contentment is a learned state of being.

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Here is my summer bucket list. Most of the items on the list are things that I already do, but that I do not stop and appreciate while I’m doing them. How beautiful is it that I can get on my bike and ride on safe roads? How lucky am I to watch movies, in theaters with reclining seats, with my friends? In retrospect, the only change I would make is to add even simpler activities—drink a beer, go on a walk, cook a meal—that I often take for granted.

My summer bucket list

I’ve had rivers on my mind since I went to Arkansas that weekend in June. They’re in a constant state of reconstruction, every moment becoming something that is both different and exactly the same. I know what is and has been important to me over time. Connection, creation, story, movement. Like a river, the specifics change, but the currents stay the same. I’m learning that these things can be simple if I let them.

Talk soon,

Kendall