The Life List
A twist on the question: what do you want to be when you grow up?
When I was 14 years old I made a “life list”. I remember sitting cross-legged on my grandmothers’ thick beige carpeted living room floor with my grandfather’s ultra-slow Dell laptop computer wired into the socket with the dial up cable. I have no idea what inspired me to type a list of everything I wanted to do with my time here on this planet, big or small. I published it in the MySpace blog-like section with my little profile photo in the corner (naturally, taken from above so you could barely see my eyes).
The collection sat there until MySpace became obsolete, but I guess I snapped a photo of it, printed it, and kept a copy deep in my records, until dredging it up again almost 20 years later.
Surprisingly, without ever really consulting the list, many of the items (or similar sentiments) have been achieved through following desire or letting life lead me. For example, I did get a degree in psychology at NYU (but developed many qualms with academia in the process). I only have 2 countries left in Western Europe to go, but I actually find the east much more my style. I didn’t start my own political party, but founding a lefty non-profit is kind of close. I went to Morocco, choreographed a ballet routine, wrote many songs, scenes, and recipes, even made my own fragrance (not for aesthetic but for ritual purposes), and I do indeed live in Germany.
Some are so obscure that I’m not sure how they even got on the list. Bubble gum? I don’t even recall liking chewing gum that much. Sorority? Girl...what? Australia? I think I just liked Aussie Shepards. The Vatican? Why?!
Still others are so embarrassing that I wish to stretch across time-space and have a good long chat with her about her values and assumptions. I grew up catholic, but I had no real concept of what a ‘mission trip’ was. Thankfully, I rebelled against organized religion long before I could even get past Genesis in the Bible. Also, we desperately needed a talk about colonialism, tokenizing indigenous peoples, and appropriation. If I’m lending a little compassion to 14 year old me, however, I think growing up in a mostly non-white family while having my Filipino roots consistently denigrated underneath whiteness was felt in a lot of subconscious ways. Even at a young age, the alienation and curiosity was present.
We Change Dramatically, and Hardly at All
Looking back, at well more than double the age I was when I wrote the life list, a saying from an old mentor rings true: ‘We are all essentially the same person we were when we were 5’. We change dramatically, in our influences, values, and knowledge, but also fundamentally, hardly at all. I look at that list and I see a girl who wanted to take risks, exercise her creativity, someone who enjoyed whimsy, but also desperately wanted to help and contribute. I see a girl who, even then, knew that the world was in crisis and headed for catastrophe, and hoped she could do a little something about it. I see the hints of political rebellion juxtaposed with a goody-two-shoes boxed in by her cultural and religious influences. I see the ancestral influences of German culture but a curiosity for my Filipino ancestral roots that felt hard to place or name, and a deep longing for nature and community.
What I find interesting about a life list is that it is explicitly NOT a goals list. It has no boundaries drawn by external limits or expectations, it has no time frame or imperative. Perhaps because of that, I found that some of these were soul desires that were with me much younger than I had imagined. For example, I suppose I always felt there would be a time that I would move to Germany. I can’t remember anyone ever putting this idea in my head; I even knew it would likely be a very distant dream (‘when I’m older’ aka ancient aka kid code for anything over 27). Yet, here I am living near Berlin. It can never really be known if that seedling idea influenced my reality or if something deeper in me would have always guided me toward this place.
Recently, I made a new life list. The items on it take the old essences of dreams and desires and repackages them with new knowledge and experience. ‘Live in a tree for a day’ is the only one that rightfully remained word-for-word - and seems more do-able now that my husband is an avid tree climber. ‘Join a sorority’ is now ‘join or create a coven’, ‘finish the bible’ is now ‘finish an ancient spiritual text’. Some are completely eliminated (sky diving? no.), and new ones added or expanded. It’s much harder now to not treat this list as a goals list or to not feel like I have to plan or live them out immediately. But I can’t wait to read it in another 20 years and see what’s changed, and what about me is still, at her core, who she was when she wrote the life list.