It’s dangerous to sit around with not much to do. One could get bored, or do something drastic, like make a list.
* * *
Your fingers fidget, lay hold of the ink pen on the table, slide over a nice clean sheet of paper. Before you know it, the pen and the paper eyeball each other with this erotic glint. They get together, ink to paper, and in no time, conception takes place. You know how it works. It’s a primordial and amorous attraction. The List is born.
Like any newborn, life begins. And like any life, who knows where it will go, what roads it will take, what encounters it will make. It has a fire to stoke, an ambition to feed. It puts life in motion. It heads to the nearest Exit sign.
Today, I discovered something…I’m a slave to The List. Maybe you are, too. Think about it.
Ok, maybe that’s being a little bit extreme. That would make The List a tyrant, a jailer, a dictator who would outfit us with invisible balls and chains. No, it may be more like the marriage contract we enter willingly, a contract with a lot of ‘do’s’ in it.
Whichever way its character is described, very little gets done without it. Like a full moon, The List moves all tides of action. One minute you’re sitting around bored, the next you’re dead-focused on the ‘to-do’s you’ve just created. You bolt out the door, list in hand, things to do.
When did we begin making lists? I can’t remember, maybe sometime back in high school. Maybe it was not a written list because young minds don’t necessarily need lists. The brain works in romantic fantasies and wild mirages centered mostly on the hormonal urgencies of the self.
But we moved on from there and things became more serious, like making the college dean’s list, or the Fraternity party list. Important things. And here we are today, still making lists, although the contents of them have changed significantly. Look at your last list. You’ll see.
We don’t need to ask Google how to create lists. We’re experts. There are basically two types of lists. One, the ‘Pooled’ type, and the other the ‘Queue’ type. Maybe you have other forms.
I never liked the ‘Pooled’ variety. You know, the ones where the entire sheet of paper is covered with tasks having no semblance of order. Just a ‘stream of conscious’ mish-mash, a jumbled mess, things written sideways, horizontal, vertical, upside down and mostly illegible. It’s the type the creative geniuses among us prefer.
My preference was the more logical ‘Queue’ sort, an orderly, 1 to 100 in legible format. This list is easier to sub-categorize the various entries and make a cohesive whole out of the day’s goals. It always brings a smile to look at it at day’s end and see how much was achieved, like patting myself on the back.
Maybe the most indispensable list to make is the grocery list. It’s absolute folly to head to the grocery store at 5:00, hungry and without a list, everything relegated to memory as you drive there. You know what happens. You fill up the buggy, spend $500 and when home find you didn’t get one thing you needed.
No, it’s good to have a detailed grocery list, made in some semblance of order along the same lines the store is laid out. Aisle 3 for this, aisle 5 for that, and so on. Such a detailed list guarantees success, savings and praise.
There’s a correlation between lists and age. Both tend to get shorter. The days of full-page lists are past. Age changes outlooks, expectations and dulls former great passions. It’s sort of like a snapshot of Now, or a barometer of attitude. Our lists deal less with the future and more with the present.
My daughter loves gardening. She has a beautiful ‘pollinator’ garden full of pollinating insects, bees, butterflies, birds and some snakes. It requires a lot of maintenance. So, recently she re-framed the garden into manageable shapes. I ask her why.
She replies: “I lose the joy of gardening if I try to do too much. I keep my list short, do less and remain in the present moment. By doing less I enjoy my garden more. It’s that simple.”
Do less, enjoy more. What a concept.
* * *
The List… don’t leave home without it. Forgetfulness is waiting right outside your door.
Bud Hearn
March 25, 2024