Blinking into the light and trying to breath for the first time, a baby cries to fill its lungs with air, wondering why is it so cold. Soon it finds itself warm and cosy and gets comfortable with the air around. It wonders who it is that cares for it. Then it realises it is hungry and begins to ask for food. Soon enough it learns to touch and feel and walk. The world is so huge, even though it is as small as a room. Getting from one end to the other seems to take forever. It sees these huge hands and fingers hold it and help it. The To Do list begins with basic functions of life. Live laugh giggle play kick love cry eat sleep etc. Then education begins...learning to be with another being, being civil, and so does the To Do list grows. Now it has home assignments, cleaning ones room, things one wants...get a colorful dazzling toy or draw some squiggles on a wall. The To Do list keeps growing as one advances to bigger tasks and wants. Things of lesser priority go down the list and vanish out of sight. College, he wonders what he wants. The main and most difficult question we all spend our entire lives trying to answer. What do you want? The To Do list now grows to building a life, to independence, to definition of what life means to oneself. Buying a house, sharing ones life. The big dreams begin, of conquering the world, changing the world, becoming someone. Does one want to be with the herd and be safe or one wants to stand out and breathe the blowing wind above. The To Do list remains. As time passes one learns to compromise...make a deal with life...make the most of it at the moment..... obligations, time, requirements of being born in a society, precede wants and soon the wants get pushed down far enough to fall off the page. These wants that one defined for oneself since a kid are lost. One learns one cannot get everything but we still hang on to the very few wants that we wish to complete someday. Life moves on, one grows from an individual to a parent to a grandparent. And before you know it, physical and mental limitations supercede several things....the To Do list has many items checked off now and the wants come to the top. The agenda is back to basic functions of life and soon it all ends. All remains is a To Do list with some items scratched and some things yet to be done. One wonders if one would have re-arranged it differently if one got a chance to do it all over again. Its all about a "To Do" list.
3 comments:
I am not sure if you have ever heard Joni Mitchell. But, something tells me that she will resonate with what you have been trying to get at. This came to my mind as I read through your last posting: http://jonimitchell.com/musician/song.cfm?id=BothSidesNow
The basic functions are still the same - live, laugh, giggle, play, kick, love, cry, eat and sleep. They are just disguised from the mature- us. We always know what we want. We are either in denial or not courageous enough to want it enough or reject what we do not want.
For all one knows, this is the life that one has now... this is the time to do anything... to-do list is just a temporary incidental piece of paper with scribbles which will be scribbled off anyway.
As you accept that not all items on the list are meant to be scratched off, the more the unscratched items disappear.
In the end, all you have just have is a to do list with all items scratched off and tons of peace.
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