What's on your list?

At this time of year, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a question of your Christmas wish-list.  But you’d be wrong.

My six-year old daughter was in a far more philosophical mood yesterday as we sat talking over lunch.

‘Dad,’ she said, whilst reaching for another slice of cheese, ‘I still have loads of stuff I cannot do.  I can’t tie my shoelaces; I can’t juggle; and I have no idea how to drive a car.’

And before I could even begin to reassure her, she continued:

‘However, I do know how to draw a dinosaur; I can certainly make a model of Buzz Lightyear out of boxes; and I think I even know how to make a cup cake machine.’

I was momentarily stuck by the thought of what a cup cake machine might actually look like, but it sounded delicious nevertheless.

More seriously, though, it got me thinking about how much of our lives we spend making lists.  Sooner or later, of course, ‘learning to tie our shoelaces’ begins to feature less heavily.  However, as we build our Résumés (lists of professional achievements) and refine our Top-10 places to visit before we die, it’s clear that we never quite kick the habit.  It’s as if we need somehow to locate our place in the story by constantly looking back on how far we’ve come and looking forward to what still lies further down the path.

And our love of list-making doesn’t stop there.  Today, we can enjoy everything from the David Letterman Show, to iTunes’ playlists and Facebook’s 25 Random Things About Me, not to mention more run of the mill long-lists, short-lists, grocery lists, laundry lists, and Christmas wish-lists that fill up our day-to-day lives.

So, what’s going on?  Why the modern obsession with putting everything into a series of bullet points?

David Wallechinsky, co-author of the Book of Lists, first published in 1977, tries to explain:

"People are attracted to lists because we live in an era of overstimulation, especially in terms of information and lists help us in organizing what is otherwise overwhelming."

I used to think that, when faced with life’s limits, our natural default was to tell stories.  I now realize that this is not entirely true and that there is always the option to start a list.

Back, though, to the lunchtime discussion with my daughter. 

I’m guessing that, if he were with us now, Wallechinsky would say that, faced with the limitations of her age, she was simply trying to organize and make sense of a world that is quickly becoming complex and difficult to predict; falling back and drawing comfort from her proven ability to draw a dinosaur and design a cup cake machine.

And as my little girl continues her afternoon play routine, I can only conclude that she and I, in the end, are exactly the same.  Without our lists, we will soon forget how far we’ve come.  Without our lists, we will soon find ourselves overwhelmed by how short life is and how much there is left to do.

Comments

[Sve]

I think both stories and lists help us organize our lives and make sense of the world around us. However, at least in my mind - lists are always the more logical, "dry" and straightforward way to do so...It is like having a checklist for life and saying: "OK, if I do this, this and this - I will be successful or happy or..."
Stories, on the other hand can be rather illogical and emotional sometimes...And I guess it takes a bigger effort to make sense of the world if you look it through this prism :)
In any case, I think your daughter is giving us a good lesson. When making lists, often people look at them and see mainly the things they did not manage to finalize - and maybe forget to reassure themselves for the things they have actually achieved. And we should congratulate ourselves for success, right? :)