We hear a lot of talk these days about "bucket lists."

I don't remember exactly where the term started, but I do recall there was a movie a few years back starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in which two oldsters decided they would knock off their bucket list before they died.

I'm pretty sure the term comes from "kicking the bucket," although right now I feel too lazy to look it up. Besides, if it doesn't, it should.

My wonderful daughter Pauline did a bucket list a few years ago, and it was a long one with plenty of things she wanted to accomplish, other things she wanted to experience and places she wanted to visit during the rest of what I hope will be a very long life. I was fascinated by her list, although I have never really gotten around to making one myself.

[caption id="attachment_468" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Bucket list baseball in Houston"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0087.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-468" title="DSC_0087" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0087-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

The closest thing I have myself is my baseball list, with my goal of seeing a game in every major league city. I've written about that recently, so I don't feel the need to go into it too deeply again. I'm knocking off Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver and Phoenix this summer, which is cool. The toughest remaining part will be the Northern swing through Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis, and that will have to wait for another year.

I still intend to learn to surf, and the fact that I'm getting myself into shape this year will make that a great deal easier to pursue once I'm back in California. I would like to take flying lessons, although that may be something I'll have to defer because of the risk involved.

But that sort of bucket list isn't what I'm really looking for. That's full of things about <em>me</em> and for <em>me</em>. And while that's nice, I really do want to shift at least part of the focus to what I can do for <em>other</em> people.

<!--more-->My friend Larry Pollard from <a title="All Voices" href="http://www.allvoices.com" target="_self">All Voices</a> makes trips to Jamaica and Haiti to help people both materially and spiritually. He lives in Georgia, and when Nicole and I move there next year, I'm hoping we can get involved at least somewhat with something like that. I want to start doing regular volunteer work, and I think I would be happy if at least part of the work involved was physical labor.

Yes, I'm (somewhat) old and (borderline) decrepit physically, but I am getting into better shape for the long haul, and when I wrote down an insight I received today, it was all about work.

<em>"If you want to understand your place in the world, start each day with some sort of physical labor."</em>

We are so out of balance -- most of us, anyway -- between our physical self and our mental self. My late grandfather spent most of his life working at blue-collar, laborer jobs, and he was strong and healthy into his eighties. In fact, he was repainting his house and re-shingling his roof on the far side of 75.

He didn't need to "work out" or go to a gym to keep from getting fat. His <em>workouts</em> were hard work.

My life has been almost exactly the opposite. I probably couldn't have painted a house or shingled a roof at age 25, let alone 75, but now I'm getting up every morning at 6 a.m., getting dressed and shoveling horse manure in the pre-dawn light.

And I've never been happier with myself.

Go figure.

Maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful bucket list.