There comes a time in everyone’s life when they are forced to make a choice—go to class or skip it, call the girl who sits in front of you in English Lit or let her go date someone else, carpe diem or don’t.

Ultimately there is something to be said about every choice we make, but when they are boiled down, all seemingly mundane forks along the proverbial path of life come to one point: this choice could be your last.

Last Wednesday, the Association for Campus Entertainment (ACE) invited MTV’s “The Buried Life” to UNCW. It gave students the chance to ponder a question the four guys from Canada have coined as their own: “What do you want to do before you die?” This got students talking, and perhaps for the first time, considering doing what they love.

For those unfamiliar with “The Buried Life” or MTV, the project was created by Ben Nemtin, Dave Lingwood, and Duncan and Jonnie Penn. In 2006, the guys were in the midst of university life.

Jonnie was living in a friend’s boiler room.

“He couldn’t even afford a can of yams for dinner,” said Lingwood.

Lingwood, on the other hand, was eating his way through college.

“I went through three meal cards. I was stuck. I thought, ‘I’m going to die in this wetsuit right now!’ I needed to make a change,” said Lingwood.

“We all had one thing in common. We all wanted to do something, we just didn’t know what it was,” said Nemtin.

The guys got together and compiled a list of “100 Things to Do Before I Die.” Their bucket list was two-fold: for every one thing they cross off their own list, they help another person they meet along the way cross something off of theirs. Thus began The Buried Life Project.

That summer, they crossed the first thing off their list—#14: Be a Knight for a Day. Three years later, in 2009, MTV contracted the Buried Life for a documentary TV series by the same name.

“We got to make the show we wanted to make,” said Nemtin. “We wanted to make a show our friends would want to watch so we had to do the biggest stunts ever. We had to make it badass.”

It was these stunts—breaking into the Playboy mansion and entering a Krump competition among them—that brought Ben, Dave, Duncan and Jonnie national fame, and inspired young people to start lists of their own.

“It’s not about completing the list. It’s about doing what you love,” said Nemtin.

“We get a lot of letters because we inspire people,” said Nemtin. “I carry a letter with me that we received recently. It concluded, ‘Thank you for doing what you do.'”

“When you boil it down, you do things you’re passionate about,” said Nemtin.

“We want to go cave diving, treasure hunting, get bit by a shark, go hand gliding and go to Mardi Gras,” said UNCW juniors Alex Maceachern and Nick Howley. They were also hoping for a little guidance from the Buried Life guys.

“We want to do what they do,” said Maceachern and Howley.

Senior Annie Kruger identifies with the humanitarian side of the Buried Life project.

“I want to touch down in every country on every continent and make a difference,” said Kruger.

Towards the end of the show, about 15 students got to share something off their own bucket list with the audience.

But what most people came for was the secret. How did the Buried Life guys start doing what they do and keep it up? Lots of hard work, help, and phone calls, plus the willingness to take a risk.

“There is a difference between dreams and projects,” they said.

Projects are composed of steps towards reaching an ultimate goal. So what is their advice? Three steps: 1) make a list. 2) Go after it.

“Be creative with your persistence,” said Nemtin, referencing the countless phone calls he has made in pursuit of crossing a single item off the list.

The last step: 3) help others.

Those are the keys to the success of the Buried Life, plain and simple.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived three lives already,” said Nemtin. “You keep a piece of everything you do, and sometimes we forget to step out of it.”

“We push ourselves, and we meet a lot of people. By asking the question, ‘what do you want to do before you die?’ you enter someone’s life in the rawest way,” said Lingwood.

So acknowledge the life you want to live, your “buried life,” the one that gets lost underneath school and work and pointless obligations. Go out and cross things off your list so you too may feel the joy that can come of living three lives.