(This was a final paper for one of my English classes in college. I think I still stand behind about all of what I said. Understanding it even better now on the other side of some of these “list” adventures. Of note, I am super aware now of how I truly don’t care if I travel the world or not… and I get to the idea behind that in this essay as well. This whole essay kind of helps explain how my “life list” is a tool for life appreciation much more than a “to do list” or even a “want to do list”. I just feel like I need to mention that because I fear the age of Social Media Influencers helped cause a fixation on the glamour of travel, and I don’t want to feed into that. Yet I worry that my more traditional list items do, and so my whole project will be misunderstood. My project is not about adventuring in the conventional sense. And there are so, so, so many more ways to live a full life other than travel… and it is so important to live the life that suits you. Indeed, my project is merely about how the spirit of adventure can help you live life more deeply and fully and not be limited by fear… no matter where you are or what you are doing in life.).
Finitude is human limitation, notably manifested in death and suffering, and ignorance. But this doesn’t really bother me right now. Instead, I am currently prone to ponder the finitude I bump into every day. And not just bump into, but collide into on the sidewalk and spill my hot cocoa on. Or trip over in front of a roomful of people. This is the type of mundane finitude which one meets with every day that exposes one as a mere mortal, replete with imperfections. I have known many finite people, and while they have often seemed to handle their finitude with much more grace than I have, I still venture to say that the aspect of human limitation which leaves the most, though not deepest, nicks on our knees is the everyday finitude found when we say the wrong thing or don’t do say or do what we should, or try things and fail, or find other ways—sometimes too literally—to stumble through life.
I have suffered such finitude most all my life. Especially in high school, where feelings of mortality would rush over me all in the instant of pulling on a door that was clearly marked push. Redemptively, such instances of human imperfection are often funny, but sometimes our brush with finitude seems to sidetrack us just enough so that we miss the bus that was going where we really wanted to be, or leaves us with more pain than just a knicked knee. And then this seemingly un-profound mundane finitude can be achingly hard to bear. This is why I was a mortifyingly shy and self-conscious girl through high school: I ducked into a dark alley whenever I saw finitude on the street; I would rather miss my bus this way, than risk the exposure of an encounter with my own failings.
But lucky for me, boredom was the one thing I couldn’t stand more than people knowing me for the mortal I was. Boredom was, and is, the bane of my existence. I could never stand it. And being shy was boring. There was so much I wanted to do. And so as high school graduation approached, another type of mundane finitude became my concern: the utter inability to realize the limitless possibilities of life. There was no way I could do all I wanted to do, and worse, there was no way I would even try if I desperately didn’t want to fail. But my dad unwittingly gave me some poetic advice when I was looking for a job senior year. I didn’t want to apply to many places, because I was sure they would reject my application, so my dad said, “Let them tell you no, but don’t tell yourself no.” In that passing remark I found the truth of how I was living my life. I had set limits far below those of finitude, so that I wouldn’t have to come up against finitude itself. I had told myself no, so I wouldn’t have to find the definite failure of finitude itself. I hadn’t lived, but only made a lot of excuses so that I wouldn’t fail.
Okay, maybe (most likely) I was being dramatic. I had probably lived a little. But how was it possible that I had come anywhere close to living life fully if I refused to find the limits of life itself, if I refused to face my finitude?
Facing Finitude Step 1: write a list
With this realization, I wrote a list of anything and everything I thought I might want to do. A list wrote down in random places, but written down, nonetheless. Not a bucket list so much, as just a list where everything I put on it would stop being wishful thinking and instead become a viable option as something I could do. What I wrote on the list didn’t have to seem possible, but writing something down entailed at least the smallest smidgen of commitment to it. With this list, I wouldn’t limit myself from the start of my life, thinking there was so much I couldn’t do. I would try things that seemed out of my reach. And possibly fail. Or I would decide these were things I didn’t really want to do, so I just wouldn’t do them. But I wouldn’t act like I couldn’t. I just wouldn’t tell myself “No”. For so many people have things they wish they could do, but they act like they can’t. It’s easier to act like you can’t. But I have found it is not nearly as much fun.
The First Things to Make the List:1
#1 Travel the World (I think I got this idea from watching The Chipmunk Adventure when I was little, leave it to me to be inspired by chipmunks.)
#2 Learn to Sail a Tall Ship (Yeah… got this idea from a computer game. I really know where to get inspiration.)
#3 See where I was born (Got this idea from seeing where all my other siblings were born, but not me.)
Facing Finitude Step 2: do what is on your list
After I wrote down my list I just started doing things. A step too often overlooked by people with lists. Most things weren’t even on my list, but the simple resolve required to write the list was enough to make me resolve just to live beyond the comfort of shyness or hiding from failure, and it was amazing how easily the fear of finitude which informs self-consciousness can be thrown off, as well as the fear of failure itself. Also, I was surprised by how much easier it was to do stuff on my list than I thought it would be. I was lucky, but there is also something to be said for being ready to take advantage of any opportunity that comes your way. When any small opportunity seemed like it would remotely lead to anything on my list, of course I would pursue it. This is the part where I meet some crazy people and do fun things. So far, my field experiment as to how to live life was going well, but I hadn’t even reached the best part.
Things I’ve crossed of the list quicker than I thought I would:
#2 Learn to Sail a Tall Ship (For some reason I thought I wouldn’t be able to do this until I was 40)
#33 Go surfing in Hawaii (Now, becoming good at surfing is another matter)
#5 Road trip to L.A. (I’ll have to do this again, since some friends and I did it spontaneously with only two weeks to get there and back, so I think I might’ve missed something… but at the same time, that trip was full of everything.)
Facing Finitude Step 3: lay your list aside and live
Things I Never Would’ve thought to put on my list:
#42 Lead my new brother-in-law’s uncles in an artistic rendition of the Thriller dance at my sister’s wedding (This was a very freely interpreted version)
#56 See the sunset over the Atlantic Ocean (I wasn’t imaginative enough to realize you can do this)
#32 Roller Skate at the Galaxy Roller Rink in Shallotte, N.C.—and almost win limbo2 (Who would think of this? Maybe I should’ve felt bad for beating all those 12 year olds at limbo. Maybe. Not really.)
The only excuses I decided to allow for not doing something on the list is that I tried and failed, or that I didn’t really want to, or that there was something I wanted more. This required me to be honest with myself, and so I quickly discovered why it is more people do not live life to the fullest: it is not comfortable to be honest. It is so true that it can seem better to not be honest, because it protects one from exposure. In this way dishonesty makes one invulnerable like a demi-god. But in reality, one becomes more like a demi-man, always with an excuse for everything and never saying what one really means– keeping one from finitude and from living life to the fullest (not to mention bestowing a ridiculous title). But by refusing excuses, I confronted the fact that I was really avoiding some things just because I was scared.
Or even better, when I forced myself to be honest, I began to realize what I really cared about in life. And that is the biggest thing I learned from my crazy high school list: to find what really matters in life. And by that I don’t just mean the list helps you get your priorities straight, but that it makes clear to you that which you would give up the whole of your list for, that which you love more than life itself. You start to see the list-worthiness in things you had taken for granted. Once you have been in one place where you thought you so desperately wanted to be, you begin to realize where you truly do want to be. When you do something you so obviously want to do, and are where you obviously want to be, you can use that same clarity to see less obvious things you want to do and places you want to be. Yes, having so many options makes one ponder what it is in life that they really love with mad crazy earnestness.
People settle for far less than finitude, because they’re afraid. But the funny thing is that it is in so far as we are finite, that we can live full lives. After all, if we were infinite then we would have no boundaries or limitations (which actually does sound fun… but it’s still true we wouldn’t have anything to fill either). And so I say: face finitude. In this some people may think that we will come up against failure, and that is exactly right. But there are things worse than failure, like never living with wild abandon in all the soul-searing, gut-wrenching, jaw-dropping glory of existence. Or never loving something more than you love the safety of the less than infinite limitations you have set for yourself. Or never being the person you want to be, or know you should be, but only being the person who you wake up as. Or never recognizing a moment of being in a place where if you could be anywhere in the world, you would be there; and that of all the things on your list, it is the one thing you wouldn’t miss. Such moments are where you realize it is okay to be finite. Because who needs to be omnipotent, when they are where they want to be? I wish I were not so clumsy a mortal as to have needed a list to teach me things like this. But well, it’s okay.
1 Here I’d like to note that the more profound things on my list are classified information. But what you see here has been declassified for the sake of example.
2 Haha, this is even more fun than it sounds. They don’t even have air-conditioning. Or any patrons over 12.