Action Lists: the Other White Food

We make lists to organize our lives and help us remember details. We use lists to sort through options and make decisions, for example: What should I do first? Who do I need to call? Where should I go on my vacation?

Lists of actions—like other white foods—are bad for you. I put them right up there with French bread, ice cream, and donuts. Action-lists are saturated with high expectations. They fill us with empty promises and good intentions. They are highly processed. Just like wheat gets processed 14 times before it becomes a tuna-on-white, actions must be processed again and again.

Of all the words in an action-list, the verbs are especially processed—by which I mean—bad for you. Verbs direct us to act, commit, and perform. “Do this, don’t do that.” “Start this, stop that.” We even create personal make-over lists with stuff about ‘becoming a better person,’ or ‘being kinder to fools.’ These types of lists are about processing our inner selves; they are very dangerous.

Unlike action-lists, lists of ‘things’ are as warm and innocent as their items allow. Thing-lists help us remember what is good for us. For example, “Fresh coffee beans.” Or, “Bran muffins.” We feel satisfied as each item is addressed. Thing-lists help us run errands, write Christmas cards, and read the books we like. Thing-lists are wholesome and don’t pester us. Some people actually buy pre-printed thing-lists for their groceries, complete with little empty boxes for checkmarks. You would never buy someone else’s action-lists.

I can throw away (or lose) my shopping list and still remember 96% of it at the store. This also works if I ‘write’ the list in the air with my index finger. (Be careful not to do this in public. Even a cell phone to your ear won’t keep you from looking like an idiot. To see what I mean, try writing the word ‘coffee’ in the air right now.)

January spawns that most virulent strain of action-list: My New Year’s Resolutions. This most wicked of lists embarrasses and shames us. It reminds us of our shortcomings and lapses at our most vulnerable time: winter has started and the holidays are over.

Many of the things we resolved to do last January still haunt us: losing weight, accepting ourselves as we are, spending more time with the kids, getting a life. Resolution action-lists don’t let us celebrate past successes. They have no checkboxes. Of all the lists we make throughout the year, New Year’s resolutions are by far the cruelest. Beware of all white foods and action-lists.
My resolution for 20062007?

Learn to write without moving a finger.

Comments

[Joe Begalla]

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

Since Omar wrote this before the invention of the Delete key, how do these lines relate to the validity and permancy of what we write as we record our histroies and thoughts here in the blogosphere?