Oh Christ. They’re back again. And I thought we’d seen the back of them. I’m talking about lists. Lists of Things to Do Before You Die. Fifty Movies to See Before You Die; 200 Recipes to Cook Before You Die; 908 Items of Flat-Pack Furniture to Assemble Before You Die, and so on.

Guardian is currently running a list of 1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die. Since the advent of CDs, the average album is about an hour long. So that’s 1,000 hours of my life I’ve just been commanded to give up, just like that. Still, at least it’s only a bit of listening, and I like music. What’s more, I can probably stream most of them off the internet before coughing up, so it shouldn’t cost me anything either. But 1,000 hours? That’s 42 whole days. Factor in sleeping time and it’s more like three months. That’s not a list. That’s a sabbatical.
The worst “before you die” lists, though, are the ones aimed at middle-class traveller types. These are infuriating for several reasons. First, the writers use them as an excuse to show off about how cultured and well-travelled they are.

Thing is, for all their faults, the lists work. It’s hard not to get drawn in. There’s so much crud and shod surrounding us on a daily basis, so many fair-to-middling fartclouds of “content” and “lifestyle choice”, we’re all desperate to get our hands on something actually, authentically good. And that’s what the lists promise: a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to what’s worth bothering with. In practice, however, all a lot of them actually do is make the reader feel inadequate. No matter how cynical or detached you think you’re being, you can’t help experiencing a pang of shame at not having seen Venice for yourself, even when the writer waffling on about it is clearly a jerk of the oiliest magnitude.

What about all those books I haven’t read, meals I haven’t eaten, countries I’ve never visited? How am I going to have time to fit all this stuff in? I can scarcely get it together long enough to perform the simplest of household chores, and now the Guiltlords are setting me all this extracurricular homework.

And furthermore, the more someone tells you how incredible something is, the more disappointing the reality turns out to be, largely because of the drum roll that preceded it. Take the Grand Canyon. I visited the Grand Canyon in my mid-20s. Hark at me. I stood on a ridge and gazed out and waited to have my mind blown. All I experienced was yet more guilt. I’d heard that it was breathtaking. I’d read florid descriptions of its life-altering majesty. But it was these descriptions, not the canyon itself, that were at the forefront of my mind as I stared at it. “Come on, you shallow idiot,” I said to myself. “You’re supposed to be feeling something here. What’s the matter with you?” Then I went back to the car, ate crisps and fiddled with the air-con, feeling box-empty inside.
Call me shallow, but I’ve had more impressive trips to the toilet.

Guardian