Forget the Bucket List; Live and Work with Verve

When a healthy friend keeled over last month and died of a massive coronary, many in my community took pause – even her personal trainer.  Not many of us do a better job of taking care of our health than Ann did.

The minister structured his eulogy around five adjectives.  One of those has stayed with me since I heard it.  He said that “verve” was a good descriptor of how Ann lived her life.  And just in case we couldn’t cue up the definition of this under-used word, he provided it:

Verve (vûrv)   1. great vitality, enthusiasm, and liveliness; sparkle

So I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately.  I’m wondering how to live like Ann – with v-e-r-v-e.  Her last moments were spent attacking a shag carpet with a broom trying to get it to stand up.  She died with the broom still in her hands.  That’s enthusiasm for you.

Perhaps in life and in work the idea of goals or to-do lists should be minimized.  We should strive to simply live with sparkle and accomplishments will happen naturally.

While some people successfully kick-start life by creating a list of 10 things to do before they die, why not simply approach each day with all the enthusiasm you can muster?

What would you need to change so that people could say you lived your life with verve?

To be honest, I think others would say I am pretty enthusiastic about life.   But am I in the verve category?  M-m-m-m-m, not so certain of that.   After a month of thinking on it, my assessment is that I am a work-in-progress on that verve thing.

But the deal is, I’m going to strive hard to nail it.  Sparkle up, guys.