Tear up Your Bucket List and let
Your Senses Be Your Guide

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“Ineluctable modality of the visible.” That’s a gobstopper of a phrase, and it crops up in James Joyce’s Ulysses at exactly the point when most people fling the book across the room. But it’s just a fancy way of saying that we tend to fixate on the things we see, rather than on what we hear, touch, taste, or smell.

Next time you jet off somewhere, I have a challenge for you. Take some time to engage your other senses. I’ve been to London and seen Big Ben, but it was nothing compared to the taste of cherries plucked from a branch on a stroll through Hyde Park. As for Paris, the wry smile of the Mona Lisa isn’t half as memorable as the “thud…clack!” of pétanque games in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

So many bucket lists are tailored to collecting selfies against a backdrop of some exotic sight. I think we can do better than that. The reclining Buddha of Wat Pho in Bangkok was not crafted for social media feeds, and the cruel splendor of Patagonia’s Torres del Paine peaks will endure with or without influencers throwing yoga shapes in their lee.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and we enjoy it more when we slow down and properly appreciate our surroundings. That’s living, not box-checking. But if you’ve spent months feeling like your life is on hold, it’s easy to succumb to making imaginary lists.

My advice? Shut down the spreadsheets and indulge your senses. If you can’t get out there for real, we’ll bring you there on paper.

This month: taste the oily tang of sunwarmed olives in Sicily. Feel the salt prickle of a hot onshore wind in Puerto Vallarta. Then, focus on the raked patterns of a Japanese Zen garden; or breathe in the incensescent of palo santo smoke in a Vilcabamba beer garden. For a soundtrack, listen to the unexpectedly loud baritone of frogs in a Panama jungle.

That’s a bucket list I can endorse.