I met Morgan Freeman in 2008 with my mom and my sister in our living room. In a movie centered around trying to do as much as you can before you die of a terminal illness, there was more of me trying to figure out why Jack Nicholson’s face kind of creeped me out than actually learning about what it means to live a full life. After the credits rolled, I thought it’d be fun to make my own bucket list—at the age of ten. Having not experienced very much, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do besides go to Disney World and maybe meet a famous person. After I lost that little slip of pink, Lisa Frank paper, I forgot about the concept for a few more years.

My favorite movie in the world happens to be The Fault in Our Stars. I have to specify movie, because while TFIOS is one of my favorite books, nothing can replace Harry Potter in my heart. Here’s another film about people dying mostly of cancer, and having to think about how and who they want to spend their last days with. And while Gus’s fear of oblivion is completely valid, it reminded me of what went through my head when I watched The Bucket List, and why I didn’t quite understand why people were only concerned with how they have lived their lives when they got closer to the ends of them.

Last July, a girl from Connecticut that I did not know personally died tragically trying to save her friend from being hit by a car. The story blew up even more once it came to the attention that out of the three things she had on her bucket list, that was the only thing she had to complete, thus making her dying act a completion of her dying wishes. She did not have a terminal illness, and she definitely did not go out that night expecting to get hit by a car, but the car was there and she found the courage to save someone else instead of herself. And that is when it occurred to me that I did not have a list of things that I wanted to complete before I died, and that the idea that I could die tomorrow without completing them frightened me. I admire that young girl so much for doing everything she wished to accomplish, but that anxiety made me think, “Why do people make bucket lists?”

So many of us have a routine that we follow everyday. Get up, get dressed, go to school, go to work then go to bed. We may eat, or carry out conversations in between those steps but why should something like a doctor’s appointment make you think about that routine any differently than you are now? Routines are a way to create complacency and allow us to avoid thinking about how we are living our lives. Think about the phone or computer you’re reading this on right now. Someone went out of the way during their own daily routine to think of something that could change the world. Life is about creation, and without people that veer from their routines to aid in that creation, all we would have are a bunch of people walking around not knowing what to do with themselves.

When I realized that I didn’t need a bucket list to find fulfillment in my life, that was the day I started thinking of my life as a choice. Not like a choice to live or not, but a series of choices that I make that may or may not have an impact on the way my day ends. Changing my major, being with my boyfriend, working where I do, thinking about how I want my life to play out. These are all choices that we all take for granted, when really the smallest decisions we make have the greatest impact on our characters. I don’t need a bucket list because I don’t need a skydiving receipt to tell me that I’ve lived a fulfilling life. Life is an endless book; you wouldn’t start 50 pages from the end. Not only would you miss all the beautiful writing in between, but no one actually knows when their last chapter will end.