Bucket lists realistic or wishful thinking?

I started my bucket list when I was about 5 years old. I was reading when I was about 3 and devoured books of all kinds. One of those irritating (to a child) grown ups came for a meeting with my mother and talked down to me as that type of person does and said Oh , are you reading a nice book about going to the seaside? Mummy might take you there in the summer. My mother told me later that I sat and looked at her in silence for a minute and then said " Oh no. I am going to Ulan Bator when I grow up. That is in outer mongolia you know" Picked up my book and wandered off! The family never let me forget that. So havent actually been there so far. But I have lived in Portugal and Syria. Travelled through Roumania, bulgaria and down to Istanbul and back via venice, camping. Visited the Lippizanas in the spanish riding school in Vienna. I worked in communication for an airline so that I could get cheap travel and visited all over the continent and to Thailand and Iceland etc. In Portugal I sang professionally with the Gulbenkian Choir in Lisbon. Never had loads of money to travel, but got jobs that let me move about and meet people and would rather go camping or do cheap b and b's which allowed me to travel to more places and go on local buses etc so you actually meet the people and eat the same things and not in a hotel where you may get really good food , but usually international not the local menus. So I have tried to see something of the world. Like everyone it has not all been plain sailing. I have had cancer twice , been divorced and struggling to make ends meet. But I then met my second husband Brian who was a wonderful man. We never had a lot of money but shared our passions and had an old yacht and sailed all the west coast of Britian and round island and up in the outer hebrides. Sadly he died 4 years ago, and now due to health reasons I am having to sell my house and go for a ground floor flat. Dealing with moving in covid times is difficult. Havent been able to have anyone to help me and it has been hard work and saddening to try and sort through 20 years of life here and leave my garden. so my list at the moment is to be able to go to our special place at the top of Swaledale and sit there without a mask on. To be able to travel to see my grandson and all my family and to be able to hug and kiss them. To be able to meet up with my lovely friend who I have known since I was two. To be able to sing in the Swaledale Festival in the choir. So I am so glad I have done lots of things and would still like to go to the Galapagos Islands and Madagascar, but the real joy and what matters is to be able to meet the people I love and care about. So I will look forward to my second vaccination and the hopes that soon I can meet them all again. It is over 10 months since I have seen my little grandson or anyone as I have had to be shielding so that is the absolute bucket list. But as a gardener , you know you need several buckets to use in the garden so I am sure I could do another totally different bucket - go on desert island discs for example as I have been listening to it for more than 50 years!!!

I think it’s healthy to have things to aim for and look forward to. It’s certainly better than sitting around watching TV, waiting to die as some older people seem to do.

It was one of the saddest, most depressing conversations I'd ever heard.

A relative had worked out how many years of holidays she likely had left in her life - and the places she wanted to visit.

OK, it doesn't hurt to have plans, but to just tick things off a list like that seems joyless. It's like a countdown to death.

A bucket list must never be limited by what you can do or have time to do but is all about what you want to do. So make the list as long and as adventurous as you like and then just go for it.

My husband and I have the opposite.
We have a list of all the things we never want to do again, and all the places we never want to visit again.
By mutual agreement, top of the list is Legoland.

I think it can be both; a realistic short term goal, and a place for wishful thinking.

There are places I would like to go, and a few things I would like to accomplish, but if for any unforeseen reason I didn't accomplish any of these I would not have any regrets.