Lists

Everything has its trends. This semester at CIEE, one trend has been reading. Ian was the first. He read constantly, every few days closing one book and opening another. People started asking to borrow them, and soon he organized a book swap. It has been amazing to see everyone excitedly reading and talking about books, really good books: In Cold Blood, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, To the Lighthouse, Crime and Punishment, East of Eden. I have been plowing my way through Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, which has recently become a trend in and of itself. Hopefully we will have a discussion about ethics and tactics of community organizing and revolution-making in the coming weeks.

And everybody is writing lists of things they want to do before they die. This trend can be traced to our program facilitator, Miles, who revealed his list one night in all of its 100+ item glory. Miles’ list is carefully crafted, with a detailed preface stipulating that the list is not binding and asking forgiveness if any of his items are distasteful. The list is then organized into categories and specifications (e.g. spend 3 months in Brazil).

“What I Want to Do Before I Die: The List” caught our imaginations. Why not write it down? Why not dream up things that will truly satisfy you? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? I saw lists that said make goat cheese, build my own house, take an African dance class, travel with my sister. As I began to think about my own list, I was surprised that it was hard for me to think of things I want to do before I die, and that things I expected to write just didn’t seem to fit. What I wrote was this:

Write a book
Take a figure drawing class
Learn how to play the fiddle
Learn how cars work
Work on a farm
Do a one-week meditation retreat
Go skinny-dipping when I’m 80
Travel by myself
Know enough about something to speak insightfully about it for 30 minutes

The list continues to evolve. I wouldn’t be crushed if I didn’t learn to play the fiddle or figure out how cars work, and there are things I know will be on this list when I find a way to articulate them. It was fun to write the words, fun to open up the space and time to think about what will make me happy. And it was good to share lists with friends, to find out more about them, discover common hopes, and to begin to hold ourselves accountable to what we think is important.