I have babbled, I believe, at great length about the list I have made for my life. I recently found out that it can be called a bucket list. Unfortunately for me, I find the very sound-quality of this name distasteful and trivializing. Nuff-sed.
I have been recently adding to, explicating, and regrouping this list. Actually, I should say it in plural, these lists, as it is really more than one. There are reading lists, travelling lists, learning lists, etc. Sometimes the handling of these lists is nothing more than a mental vacation - a quick visit to fantasy land, a reshuffling of the cards, and mental fondling of fantasies - at other times I consult or work with the lists in order to check on a goal, or add to, or modify it. I don't mind, I don't criticize myself if I find myself using the lists for a momentary bit of fantasy fuel and escapism - I don't discourage this at all - because if I am escaping into a world of my own goals for my life, then at the very least I am keeping my dreams in front of my eyes that I may not forget what aspirations I have.
In doing so, a number of questions have occurred to me, regarding the nature of the list. For example - what value is there in the fulfillment of a goal? As a specific example - If my goal was to climb mount Kilimanjaro - what if sudden illness or accident took me at 500 meters from the top - would I count that goal achieved? If the goal I wrote down was to read the Masnavi, and after finishing a gruellingly nasty book-length translation I note that this was only book six of the entire poem - must I continue? If my goal was to achieve conversational fluency in a total of 5 languages - if I end up with three, was it a total wash? If my goal was to learn to cook five things really well - does french toast count as one? If my goal was to earn a black-belt, but the martial art I have fallen into does not have belt rankings - do I need to take up a new sport, or once I achieve instructor status, is that enough? Furthermore - what if I don't fulfill a goal - how much of a failure is that?
By asking these (no doubt trivial to anyone with real things on their mind) questions, I am pushed into examining the reasons FOR the list - the role I expect it, want it to play in my life. I realized at one point that the point of entering a marathon was not to be able to cross the finish line. Were that the case, they could just start everybody 20 meters from the finish line and be done with it. The finish line exists only as an arbitrary marker to delineate the defining edge of an experience, with the experience, the achievement, the value within, located in the experience that is in every step of the way. Minus the experience of the pain and sweat and cramps that dog your every step of the road, the finish line is meaningless.
Thus - if I become sick 500 meters from the top of Kilimanjaro, I shall regard it as a success to have travelled to Tanzania, to have talked with the people there, to have confronted the logistics of planning, to have learned about the mountain, to have felt the pain of the climb - all of that, even minus the summit, makes it a success.
On the other hand, if by counting French Toast as one thing I can cook, I learn nothing, then this goal was meaningless.
Which reveals to me that the main goal of my list is to establish arbitrary points, far enough removed from my present condition that by the time I am near that point, I will have travelled sufficient distance to have (inshallah) learned sufficient or experienced sufficient that I am left changed by the experience. In other words, the end goal of this list is not to do the thing, but to mold myself.
If my goals stay largely unmet, but in the process of struggling I have molded my body and my mind into a finer tool, or molded myself into a finer person, then it was a great success. The man is molded by his experiences, and the goals are but arbitrary points established sufficiently far removed from myself that in the process of there arriving I may find myself changed by the experience.
Today, by the way, I will be working toward my goal of 100 pushups - (website here: http://hundredpushups.com/) and studying the constellations (I have picked 18.) I may even crawl through my ceiling and see if I can spot any stars from my roof. And in between I will be reading "Culture and Imperialism" by Edward Said - (or, failing that, I might just watch "Game of Thrones" on my computer - we shall see!)
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