Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
January 2025 – mild winter weather continues – cold, clear, calm – and as I write, there’s more snow in New Orleans than here.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS AND LOOSE ENDS
At the other end of the spectrum of life plans from making New Year Resolutions is the more mundane habit of making Things To Do lists. Mostly concerned with immediate needs. Groceries – gas for the car – minor errands and appointments, and bills to pay.
Then there are items on the fix-it-list – and another list of the tools and supplies to locate or buy to accomplish tasks.
And there are files and records that need to be kept.
And finally, there’s an unwritten, invisible list in the back of our minds of things to get, fix, or do that can wait until some other time. Because there’s no real urgency – who will know or care if they are not crossed off the list?
Most of us are list makers. I have several going at once.
It’s not that we are absent-minded.
It’s that we are so multiple-minded – present elsewhere so much of the time. And loose ends abound as unfinished business. It’s the price we pay for having and needing and wanting to do so much.
I would give you specific examples of my lists, but when I looked at them I was embarrassed.
I’ll only give you one example of the life of a list maker.
One that has a sense of success instead of failure.
Imagine a man standing in the local City Market – his shopping cart is as empty as the blank look on his face. He has forgotten to bring his shopping lists. And he can’t remember what he needed. What to do now?
This is a classic test of the admonition to find opportunity in crisis.
So, he decides to systematically walk all the aisles of the store. For one thing, it will give him some necessary exercise. For another, he will survey what’s available in aisles he would never walk in otherwise – educational. True, he will select things he didn’t know he had come for. But he may be reminded of what was on his missing list. And he will stock up on sale items that he will need sooner or later and not have to put them on his list next time.
And as a bonus, he will have conversations with employees and customers about list-loss. Their laughter at his and their common experience will remind him that he is not the only one who gets absent-minded. He is a member of the club of the List-Makers.
And that’s OK. And he will go home with far more than he came for.