Menus for Life

Did you know the word menu comes from the French noun, meaning small or detailed, and is derived from the Latin minutus, also meaning “very small”. Nowadays, of course, we use it to mean a small list, usually the stuff you can buy in a restaurant or bar, but also the lists you see on computer screens – so fairly mundane really. Here we get all sorts menus and lists for promotional print, but we never seem to get “bucket lists”, which is a shame because they really do tell you a lot about people.

I don’t know if you’ve ever come across these, but the idea is great. You sit down, contemplate your own mortality, then make a list of the things you really want to get done before you kick the bucket (get it!) – a menu of the things you think will make your life complete. This notion in itself is intriguing, but when I started looking into the idea a bit more, the irony of the whole process just slapped me in the face.

You see, the things most people seem to put on their bucket lists are the very things that could, in fact, bring about their untimely demise! Just spend a bit of time searching the net and you’ll find countless websites where people can share their ideas, and they’re full of things like sky diving, swimming with sharks, abseiling off tall buildings and bungee jumping – madness. You have to wonder if the people who write them are just trying to impress their friends.

Most of us are risk averse, and if we’re honest the “swimming with sharks” should really read “go on a 5* holiday to Florida and look at sharks through the aquarium window while being patronised by a particularly attractive tour guide” – now that is aspirational. So I’m going to go and write my own bucket list, right now, but not with a sharp pencil, I might hurt myself and not survive the trauma.