Backstage Pass by Paul Stanley

Author:Paul Stanley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Self, Health, and Happiness

12

Kick the Bucket List

I’ve always seen life as a conveyor belt. When we’re young, everyone’s ahead of us. As we get older, we start to see that the line behind us is longer than the line in front of us. It’s sobering. But that’s not a bad thing, because the reality is, we all reach our demise, and it makes the time we have here that much more precious.

For much of my life, I aspired to become more at peace with myself and more comfortable with myself and to become a better performer, better singer, better writer. At an early age, dreaming about being a good father was not in the cards. We can realize things like that only when they’re close enough to see and feel. There are also times when we have to accept what we won’t be able to do, and that’s important. There’s peace in being pragmatic enough to look at life and say, “Well, these are things I would love to do or do again, but other things are more of a priority for me at this moment in life.”

We tend to look too far into the future when we’re not equipped to have an answer. There is no ultimate goal or destination, because whether or not we reach our goal, the journey there fills us with new possibilities. We can only define ourselves today, and part of the joy of life is knowing that we will define ourselves differently in the future. That’s the excitement of self-discovery.

Life is long, and in the grand scheme of things, anything we accomplish is just an opportunity to accomplish something else—something more, something better. It doesn’t mean that any given accomplishment isn’t important. It just means that it’s of a certain moment. It’s what we did today. But what will we do tomorrow? If we are truly motivated and if we truly value ourselves and see the potential in our lives, that thirst is never quenched. That hunger is never filled. Because it’s not just a need; it’s what makes life valuable.

At this point in my life, all of the amazing creative outlets I have make me feel good. I’d like to say they make me feel young, but that wouldn’t be accurate—because I didn’t have them when I was young. I had to get older to have access to them and the ability to see them. Painting, theater, writing books, my musical side project Soul Station. I find happiness in much more mundane outlets too, like simply being a dad or cooking up a delicious family dinner.

One of the keys to all of this: I kicked the bucket list.

We often make a fundamental mistake when talking about a bucket list: a bucket list should always be expanding based on our experiences, not getting shorter. If we’re slowly checking off items on our list without adding new items, we’re doing it wrong. You could say I have only one item on my bucket list: never to reach the end of my bucket list.

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