Life List

[pegkerr]

A number of thoughts have been coming together lately on the idea of making a life list. One was this recent LiveJournal entry, where I talked about how my greatest character flaw, perhaps unrecognized until just lately, has been a reluctance to take risks, to stretch myself. A number of other things have come up that I have been reflecting upon as I've been brooding upon this:

1) My admiration of my parents, whom I've mentioned before are always learning anew. My Dad, for example, is learning Russian, and how to play the guitar at age 74. I contrast my parents' behavior with another person I know in his 70s who has really diminished as he grows older, because he does less and less--not because he is physically incapable, but because he is content with thinking and doing little.
2) Reading the book Prince Ombra years ago and being very struck by its depiction of evil as a withdrawing of self from life, of a withering of ambition into bitterness and smallness.
3) my decision to seize the day and change my hours at work so that I can devote more time to this book, and how that feels like such a big deal
4) the Ash Wednesday service tonight, where the ashes are used to mark the forehead, and the pastor says, "You come from dust, and to dust you shall return." Our life on earth is limited. Most people fail to really keep that in mind.
5)Buying that book recently List Your Self: Listmaking As the Way to Self-Discovery
6) hearing a program on This American Life on NPR this week on Superpowers. One part of the story was really striking. It told the story of a woman who, early in life, decided that she wanted to become, as much as she could, a superhero, and she made a list at the age of 13 and devoted her life to mastering things on the list. Click on this link (you'll need RealPlayer), and listen to the story about Zora, which starts 20 minutes into the hour-long program. One bit of the commentary really struck me:

Narrator: When you're a kid, you have these romantic visions of what you'll be when you grow up. But how many people are so diligent that they commit their dreams to paper and make it their life's work to achieve them? How many keep a list, amending it, adding to it, ticking things off as they go along, well into their adult lives?

I've been thinking about that comment all week. It reminded me of the story of John Goddard, another person who has had a remarkable life because he decided, again pretty early in life (he was 15) to make a life list and devote himself to mastering it.

Consider this discussion of what an accomplished lady is from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

"It is amazing to me," said Bingley, "how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are."

"All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?"

"Yes all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover skreens, and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished."

"Your list of the common extent of accomplishments," said Darcy, "has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse, or covering a skreen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished."

"Nor I, I am sure," said Miss Bingley.

"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished women."

"Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it."

"Oh! certainly," cried his faithful assistant [Caroline Bingley], "no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved."

"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."

"I am no longer surprised [said Elizabeth] at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any."

Then there's Heinlein's list:

A Man should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

What if I kept a life list? A couple of points strike me:
1. What would be my organizing principle? Zora's was that she wanted to be a superhero; Goddard was that he wanted to be a great explorer. Heinlein's list, I guess, was what he thought a person needed to master to be a complete human being. What do I want the overarching drive of my life to be? Becoming self-actualized? Fully human? Doing whatever work God has put me on this earth to do? Need to think about this, as it will affect what I put on the list.

2. If I'm really serious about doing this, it means that if I put something on the list, I mean to be really determined about wanting to do it. Some considerations: I am, perhaps, a bit more limited because I am starting later in life than Zora and John Goddard did, and some things you just can't do in life if you start too late (I'm too old, physically, for example, to become a master gymnast). And some things I might think would be cool, theoretically, but I don't really want to do them, and so there is no reason to put them down. Fly an airplane, or win an Olympic medal comes to mind.

But if I really mean to do this, and address anything I might put down really seriously, then who knows? I might really re-shape drastically the direction of my life.

Life List - first draft
Graduate from college
Get graduate degree
Marry, have children
Write a book and get it published
Study a martial art (which one? How do I decide how proficient should I be before I can check this one off the list?)
Learn how to play Gaelic fiddle
Become proficient in French
Learn how to fire a gun
Run a marathon

Um . . . must think more about this, particularly about what the guiding principle should be.

Suggestions for the list? What's on your list?

Peg

Comments

[sundancekid.livejournal.com]

I love that Heinlein quote. *saves into quotes folder*

I actually started a list recently - graduate from high school, graduate from college, join the Peace Corps, fall in love, learn to ballroom dance, speak Norwegian, write a novel, and get an action figure of myself made are all on the list. :p

[dragonpaws.livejournal.com]

I've always kept a sort of life list in my head (I tend to lose pieces of paper and computer files just don't have the authority a life list needs, for me) and one of the big items on it has been to learn how to dance ballroom. I'm in college now and I've been a member of ballroom club for the past six months. It feels great to be working on things like that, especially after high school and feeling like my entire self can be summed up by my GPA.

As for the martial arts proficiency, I have friends who are in it (one in particular who loves it) and from seeing them and their teachers, I have to say that to really learn martial arts it has to become a way of life. Part of what seems to be the essential drive of any person in martial arts is that they can always get better. I don't believe they ever consider themselves truly proficient. (how encouraging, no? Of course, this is hakkaryu karate jitsu -the spelling may be off- and other forms may have different philosophies)

[skg.livejournal.com]

I have had a list like this, and have thought about having a life list, but I never really started to live by it until this past year.

[By the way, Peg, I bought the List Your Self book too. Great for getting into characters' heads. And my own. Thanks.]

A year ago this Friday my grandmother died. She lived by the motto "Enjoy Life"--after working in a factory during WWII, losing her husband at age 43 and raising two kids alone, living independently until age 80--she never stopped loving life and doing the things she wanted to do.

When she got sick, I was working in a job I hated and was miserable. I had, however, just started writing a story I liked and had a conference paper accepted for a literary conference. I didn't want to find myself at age 80 with nothing to look back on but my paystubs and a lot of wasted youth. Not long after my grandmother died, I left my job.

Now, a year later, I have a new job that I love, I am taking English lit classes on my way to another degree, I write conference papers for fun, and I have 300+ pages of a working novel I hope to publish someday. Even if I don't, I'm happy. I hope I can keep it up--but if something goes awry, I will try and remember that my grandmother must have had bumpy times as well and didn't give up. I don't have a list yet, but I will soon.

So now that I have sapped up your LJ...I guess I will shut up.

Sarah

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

nooo, no, don't shut up, that was wonderful. *hugs sarah* i will be thinking about this post, and Peg's, all day.

Peg, you have my brain whirling. A much-needed nose of self-evaluation today. What sorts of things would be on my list? Well, to quote Stephen Sondheim, "what i want most of all is to know what i want." I am in a place where I am shooting blindly, with no idea what my future goals are but focusing on immediate things I know I want--primarily returning and finishing my music degree. I have been content to see where things take me. That isn't my normal way of course, because I really love list-making and I have made a list of "25 things i will do before i die" every year since i was in 8th or 9th grade or so. i've enjoyed seeing how the list changed and developed as i got older--but it seems like some things are perennially on it that i have never yet successfully managed to sit down and do (#1 being "send christmas cards").

good luck with your list. you're already off to a great start. for me, on my list this week is finally reading The Wild Swans, which was the book I was saving to reward myself with after doing well on a particularly stressful mid-term.

*hug*

On martial arts...

[ex-muzukashi890.livejournal.com]

Decide what you want to do with it. Do you want to be able to face any armed attacker and kill them? Take the Israeli martial art. Do you want something to relax and help you focus ki/chi? Look into aikido, tai chi, or check out good ole yoga. Something in between for self-defense? Not Tae Kwan Do. (No offense to anyone who may be in it--American style is too much of a sport.)

It's amazing what martial arts training will do for your focus and willpower, though. And as someone who took a bit of Tai Chi, I'd definitely encourage it. It's soothing, graceful, relaxing, and also quite nasty to others if you speed it up. :)

Re: List of life...such an excellent idea. Thanks!

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

I wrote out a list titled "Things To Do Before (Or After) I Die" during the summer that I was 20 and travelling through Australia. At the time, the purpose of my list was to remind me of all the things that were still to do and see in the world, since, like a lot of people about that age, I occasionally went through rather bleak spots where I wasn't sure that there was anything worthwhile left in the world. The list has been lost for almost 10 years, now, and every now and then I go on a rampaging hunt through boxes full of random junk trying to find the spiral notebook I wrote it in, but no luck yet. Some of the things I'd have crossed off if I still had the list: learning to drive, getting married, being in the dedication of a book (if you can count someone's Master's thesis), graduating from college, going skinny-dipping, and riding a camel. Those are the only entries I actually remember... maybe I should do a new list. If I ever find the old one, it would be interesting to see the changes.

[diony.livejournal.com]

Regarding the martial art -- is your goal to study one or to become proficient at one? They're different things, after all; the destination is not the journey & all of that. Which martial art will depend in large part on what you'd like to accomplish with it -- are you studying it for self-defense, for exercise, because it's beautiful, so you can better write martial artist characters?

Perhaps instead of looking for an initial organising principle, you could keep writing down more things that you'd like to do and then examine why you want to do each of those things. What is the driving goal behind the things which interest you?

It also occurs to me that you seem to have a goal already; you want to remain engaged with life and learn how to take more risks. Might that be an organisational princple?

A very worthy comment

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

and one which will spark further thought. Thanks. I like your summing up of my organizing principle; yes, I think that is it. The point of taking more risks of course isn't to stupidly endanger myself for the sake of thrills--but I do want to experience life more fully.

I keep thinking of the point made during a financial planning seminar I took earlier this year. The seminar leader pointed out that people are mistaken if they think that putting their money under the mattress is the least risky thing to do. On the contrary: they end up with less than they started with, because of inflation. Tolerance of risk is necessary for financial health. I've been thinking, more and more, that it is also necessary for a fully lived human life. For example: let's say that I live a long full life. If I make no new friends, and many of my peer cohort die before me, I will become lonelier and lonelier as I age. It is important to keep making new friends, esp. younger friends as I age, to keep fully connected with other people.

I would like to find a list somewhere on the Internet to give me more ideas about what to put on my life list. Can anyone point me to any?

Cheers,
Peg

Re: A very worthy comment

[diony.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it was helpful to you. Commenting in journals is much more fun & interesting than actually finishing my music history midterm. :-)

I agree about risk -- risk does not have to be 'do something stupid and dangerous for the sake of the adrenaline rush' -- and indeed, I don't think there are many people in the world who need that sort of thing in their life. My personal biases are showing, yes. But the sort of risk which is pushing one's own personal boundaries and levels of comfort -- that I think is necessary to living a full and engaged human life. Growth isn't comfortable, just necessary.

I've never made a life list, but thinking about it I can identify a few things; I want to raise kids, whether or not I'm married (although married seems increasingly likely, what with this whole being engaged thing!) and whether or not they're genetically mine.

My personal crusade is women's self-defense, so I am going to go out on a limb here & suggest you put 'Take a model mugging class from Impact Twin Cities' onto your list. I think this is something that every human being ought to do; it is incredibly mentally and emotionally challenging (but not usually terribly physically challenging) and I think vital to changing some of the most negative aspects of modern culture. Especially if you are having the reaction "I could never do something like that!", think about adding it to your list. :-)

Back to the midterm!

[blackchurch.livejournal.com]

I always wanted to be a superhero when I was growing up, unfortunately I was led to believe I was not good enough to do much of anything. Finally at 34 I am getting a clue and realizing that I can be whatever I want. Including more than just average. I've only started making life lists.

1. Get a college degree
2. Finish my book about Goth culture.
3. Learn how to hack into a network.
4. Grow up just enough, but not too much.

I'm working on all the above. I would really love to meet Zora. It's too bad she doesn't have a website.