Fifty memories.

The pursuit of irreducible memories – memories that the passage of time cannot parse or dilute – is probably an addiction, and is close to hedonism, but not quite the same. If hedonism is addictive too (think of any hedonist you know and their lifestyle is likely compulsive) the unwavering identification, pursuit and acquisition of perfect moments is a more noble – and far harder – task. But one undoubtedly worth the trouble.

I thought I was a hedonist because some people told me I was. A love of coffee, of food, of whisky, of sex – of pleasure in so many of its manifold guises – is hardly something of which to be ashamed. Who, honestly, doesn’t love things like those? Who doesn’t wish they could have the pleasure response more often than mundane life typically permits?

But now I see I was close, but wrong. Measuring out a life in coffee spoons? I could probably manage without many things if I had to. No, I’m not an exceptional hedonist after all. What I am, it turns out, is a compulsive, addictive pursuer of memories, a cognitive bounty-hunter, a collector of the reminiscences which get ground into your self like dirt into carpet. These are exquisite times when time stops and you step out from your self for a brief and endless moment, and find yourself trying to take a snapshot to remember it.

But if you need to try to encode it for future retrieval, it doesn’t meet the standard. The real ones – the ones that most people have a handful of in a lifetime but which I’m extraordinarily lucky enough to have had countless? They don’t need encoding. They’re things good and bad; triumphs and disasters; loves and lonelinesses. They are the cache files or cookies that don’t need backing up. They nestle in the dark recesses of your motherboard, a background process idling forever until called upon.

And so it was that recently – in what would’ve been a display of self-satisfied backslapping if it weren’t so suffused with genuine gratitude – I made a list of some of the things I’ve done in my almost 28 years. Life isn’t about lists – or, at least, it probably shouldn’t be – but they have a time and place. And if you find yourself coming up with a “Things to Do before you Die” list, two points – I think – are worth noting:

The first is that the list should be a long one. The number of conceivable special experiences outnumbers by an order of magnitude the opportunities available to do them. So the list should be long. If it isn’t, you’re really just not being imaginative enough.

The second point is that it doesn’t matter if the list grows at a faster rate than you can tick off its component parts. The point is not to reach the end, gripping a big red marker in your age-addled and Parkinson’s-afflicted claw, making a final triumphant Tick! before carking it elegantly in front family and friends – as attractive as that sounds. No, the destination doesn’t come at the end of the journey; it’s the journey itself. The pleasure – and here it’s conflated with hedonism – emanates both from the ticking off of items and from the introduction of new ones. My list is both growing and contracting at an accelerating rate, and that, that, is how I know that I’m doing alright.

So at the risk of appearing boastful, here are fifty of the things I’ve ticked off my list. Some were planned, some just happened. But I couldn’t forget any of them if I tried.

1. Played a concerto, accompanied by an orchestra and conductor, in front of a thousand people.
2. Played in the Sydney Opera House, sung in a choir in front of a couple of thousand people, and won a piano competition.
3. Helped an overweight and miserable boy, failing at everything in his life, to find what he’s good at.
4. Watched Ashkenazy conduct the LSO.
5. Lived with a family in a Mumbai slum.
6. Stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset.
7. Bathed an elephant in a raging river.
8. Eaten – among other things – snake, penis, rat, frog, snail, emu and quite possibly (albeit unintentionally), dog. (That definitely wasn’t on a list beforehand, but deserves its place due to being just plain weird).
9. Paddled in a canoe from one of the Croatian islands in the Adriatic to the mainland.
10. Snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef.
11. Made love in sand dunes at dawn.
12. Hit a six on the final ball to win a pick-up game of cricket with Indian streetkids, dunked a ball from a trampoline, abseiled forward down a cliff, and skipped a stone fourteen times on water.
13. Crossed India by train.
14. Crossed China by bus.
15. Bought countless children’s shoes and distributed them at a Cambodian orphanage.
16. Interviewed a modern hero of mine.
17. Picked up a stranger on a plane.
18. Picked up a stranger on a bus.
19. Kissed a complete and utter stranger in a train compartment.
20. Jumped out of a plane with my (reluctant) father.
21. Driven a gorgeous, 1950s British roadster at tyre-squealingly unsafe speeds round corners.
22. Perfectly parked a car between two others with a J-turn (Blues Brothers’-style)
23. Seen Bob Dylan live.
24. Drawn against a player who has two competition chess games archived in Chessmaster 9000.
25. Helped a family member to overcome a challenge they believed insurmountable.
26. Fed live chicken to a crocodile (again, gets onto the list because of weirdness rather than desirability).
27. Edited, by myself, an edition of a magazine read by 35,000 people.
28. Been inside the Taj Mahal, the Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s Basilica, Angkor Wat, Yad Vashem, The Duomo in Florence, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and various other of the world’s magnificent buildings.
29. Walked up the steepest street in the world.
30. Flown in a frighteningly small plane around the summit of Everest.
31. Been on a submarine and a helicopter.
32. Skippered a vessel on the open seas wearing a silly hat. In fact, basically behaved like a little boy countless times in adulthood – something all men should aspire to do from time to time.
33. Taken bored and uninspired kids and helped them to love playing music.
34. Ridden on a Harley in the Australian desert at dawn.
35. Ridden around the Pyramids – also at dawn – on a camel.
36. Been able to say a proper goodbye to a loved one before they passed away.
37. Been in love and been heartbroken.
38. Travelled by boat through the Three Gorges and the Dam on the Yangtze.
39. Drunk mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio, Hemingway’s favourite bar in Havana.
40. Spoken in front of more than a thousand people.
41. Eaten magic mushrooms and spent the afternoon giggling in a park with a best friend.
42. Visited an Istanbul Hamam and been manhandled by a homosexual and hairy Turk.
43. Spent an afternoon hanging out with a famous band.
44. Lain on a runway while a plane lands.
45. Been on long roadtrips with friends on four different continents.
46. Been published.
47. Danced at a Hindu wedding, a Bah Mitzvah and the (utterly debauched) kit kat club in Berlin.
48. Driven to Timbuktu and lived to tell the tale.
49. Been to more than fifty countries in my life.
50. And, most recently, climbed the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane at night and drunk a bottle of wine while looking over Jerusalem during the call to prayer.

This isn’t exhaustive – anyone can come up with fifty things they’ve done they’re happy about. It’s not in any particular order. And not all of these things were events planned in advance, or even memories that were happy at the time. But memories they are, memories all – irreducible, indispensable shards of a kaleidoscope of sights, smells and sounds that watch over you as you go through the motions of normal life, tolerating the infinitely forgettable minutiae. They are, or they can be, the Atheist’s God.

So, I’ve done a lot, I’m grateful for it, and although my lifelong ‘to do’ list still runs hundreds deep and is probably growing faster than I can chip away at it, I’m at least not just existing, but living. And whether one’s desires involve travelling to faraway places, or learning a skill, or overcoming a fear, or achieving something otherwise difficult – the only piece of advice I can impart worth the paper is this: forget pleasure. It comes when it comes. Remember instead and always that life and who you are is but a compendium of your experiences, a photo album that makes you greater than the sum of your parts.

So make new memories in the present, do new things now, always connect, but you’ll have them to look back on in the future, and there are futures to be planning in the present.

Carpé diem and good luck.