What’s on your list?
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
Are you a woulda’, shoulda’, coulda’, don’t have the time, money, or the significant other to do X, Y or Z, kind of person? If you answered, “kinda, sorta, not really sure what you mean by that,” then I suggest you read this piece from the Christian Science Monitor.
We all have our list of things we would like to accomplish before we die—you know, countries we’d like to visit, books we’d like to write, museums we’d like to visit at least one, cities we’d love to live in — but do we ever go out and do anything on our list so we can finally cross it off?
Don’t answer that.
When Carrie Tuhy lost her gig as a magazine editor, she decided to write down the “to-do” list that had been floating around in her pretty little head. But instead of keeping things vague like, “travel more,” she got pretty specific, like “go to India”and Abracadabra, she actually made it to India and was able to cross that off her list of things to do.
This got me thinking about SMITH’s motto, Everyone has a Story. I think those to-do lists (and not the “pick up the laundry” variety) are part of our story. They hold our dreams, wishes and hopes—and sometimes, that to-do list is the very thing that keeps us going day in and day out.
So what’s on your to-do list?
About 10 years ago, the dentist I’d been seeing for years announced that he was retiring. Since he’d been everything you want in a dentist — kind, concerned, and practially painless — I told him I was sad he’d decided to stop practicing. That is, until I found out why.
It seems he and his wife had been at a party recently, where they were talking to a woman about their own age who was rattling on about how travel, even in and around New York, had become such a nuisance that she’d stopped going much of anywhere anymore. That got my dentist thinking about all the things he hadn’t done yet, and about the possibility that one day he, too, might start thinking it was all too much trouble.
That scared him so much that he handed over his practice within a month or two and shortly after that flew to Kenya for a safari that was the first stop on a trip around the world.
Oh, and if you’re a fan of the to-do list, check out 43 Folders (http://www.43folders.com/), home of the always entertaining Merlin Mann, who will induct you into the cult of Getting Things Done (http://www.davidco.com/).
I love these lists — they’re often called Life Lists, and you see stories about people and their lists quite a bit in adventure magazines like Men’s Journal and Outside, (though climbing Kilimanjaro is not the whole story).
Here’s a few on my list in order of embarrassing to obvious to interesting:
* Learn to drive stick (my dad wouldn’t teach me and then years ago a girlfriend and I broke up in the middle of — but not due to — the lessons she was giving me … and 10+ years later I haven’t tried to learn … but I am lame nonetheless)
* Learn Spanish (of course)
* Go to the Oscar’s (just once; “attend Super Bowl” was also an item in this vein which I crossed off a few year’s ago after seeing the Eagles lose to the Patriots in Jacksonville — crusher!)
* Go to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica for 3 months with surfboard and a laptop.
Other people’s lists? What do you got?
I should probably learn to drive, you know, at all. But I gotta say there’s a lot on my list before that…