Read this New Yorker article today.

Let’s pursue something other than a bucket list. We can protect ourselves from the pursuit of temporary gratification. We are vulnerable to this when we decorate conversations with “ah I’ve been there. Look at all the things I’ve crossed off my big list!” We should do and eat and feel and live and love not for some misplaced sense of accomplishment or image, but for the pursuit of permanent knowledge, sensibility, and self-improvement.

I’ve seen some World Heritage Sites. I’ve done some stuff most others haven’t yet. So what? I’m no better than you because of it.

I don’t have a list. Two friends and I went to India on some whim of a decision, and I love them more for it. I was a sort-of-random guest at a wedding in a Vietnamese village; I didn’t plan to but it was cool. I took trains across a few countries, not because it’d make me more accomplished, but because it was the logical action. And I’d do each of them all over again.