In my ’80s

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Daily I lean on a to-do list. When I wake in the morning and go through the breakfast ritual, I know that the upcoming day will be guided by the to-do list written the night before.

Here is the to-do list for today.

• post a photo on Facebook
• go to coffee with Dave K
• walk Rudy through Ellenberger Park
• sweep and roll basement rug
• run errands: filters at Lowes, paint at Sherwin Williams, dog food at Petsmart
• paint basement floor where we’ll relay rug
• write to L.
• write a blog
• do a crossword
• read

I can sing the praises of having a to-do list, but gradually the notion of unplanned and open time is gaining my attention. What I mean by unplanned and open time is yet not clear to me. That’s for me to discover.

Thus my attention was drawn to Patricia Hampl’s op-ed essay in NYT (4/15/18) that is titled “Scrap Your To-Do List.” I will share one paragraph.

But how about just giving up? What about wasting time? Giving or perhaps giving over. To what? Perhaps what an earlier age called ‘the life of the mind,’ the phrase that describes the sovereign self at ease, at home in the world. This isn’t the mind of rational thought, but the lost music of wondering, the sheer value of looking out the window, letting the world float along. It’s nothing really, this wasted time, which is how it becomes, paradoxically, charged with ‘everything,’ liberated into the blessed loss of ambition.”

One of these evenings I’m going to let the world float along and in doing so, to be liberated into the loss of ambition..