Making a list and checking it twice

I got back last Saturday from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I went there to visit my son and his wife over Christmas (she is in graduate school at the U of M). Yes, it was cold, though not nearly as cold as it is there today. And it snowed a bit, but not nearly as much as the Midwest got the past few days. Glad to be back in gray, wet, and (relatively) warm Seattle.

It was fun there, though, and not just for family reasons. I lived in Chicago for seven years and, though the

cold and slush and ice and snow could get old, I didn't stay long enough to become entirely jaded about the whole thing. Growing up in California, weather just wasn't much of a challenge (although I could do without temperatures over 100). Living in a climate that can kill you if underdressed is fascinating to a California boy, at least for a while.

And Ann Arbor is a nice, little college town. I have never really lived in one of those—Evanston (near Chicago) and Seattle, the towns where I went to school, have a great deal going on that is not about their universities. My perception of Ann Arbor is that it more or less revolves around the University of Michigan. It makes for a different feel, but very pleasant. An abundance of book stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. Quite lovely, actually. Of course, we were there when most of the students weren't, so we hardly got a feel for what it is like when all those 42,000 people are around. A truly nice place, though.

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I have been reflecting quite a bit recently on what makes me real. I know that sounds odd, but we all struggle with this fundamental idea, that we are a solid reality living within this body, controlled by this mind, stumbling around doing stuff until we collapse into sleep and then wake to do it over again. The question that arises is, when in all of that Doing are we Being?

I am a list maker. My wife likes to say, "Check! Check! Check!" when she sees me marking things off, I suspect because I take such great pleasure in doing so. Of course, there are many reasons I do this. It is practical, for one thing, for me to know what it is I need to get done. And being organized about it is not a bad thing. But there is an inkling in the process that a part of me doesn't quite believe I exist if I am not Doing Things in the world.

Heather Martin, whom I consider to be my primary teacher (I have no idea what she thinks), likes to quote in her dharma talks from a book of tombstone inscriptions. One of her favorites is, "Got Everything Done. Died Anyway". This could easily be my epitaph if I died today. There is in my obsession with lists and getting things done a sneaking idea that if I keep busy death cannot catch up to me, that as long as I am acting in and on the world that my absence would be inimical to survival of the world.

Now, of course, on a conscious level I am not nearly this egotistical. Nor this obsessed. But when I stop to think about how important all this is to me, I realize that there is an element of the fantastical in my thinking. Even when it does not have to do with death, there is the foolish idea that I could actually someday get enough done that I will have some free time to do what I really want to do. And of course this never happens.

If we live our lives as if at some point in the near future we will finally be able to truly live, that we will at last be able to just sit and study French or write our novel or master our camera or read "War and Peace", we will reach the end having done none of these. It is an act of will to get out from under the internal and external pressure to be a Human Doing instead of a Human Being, to be a walking list of things to do. One reliable indicator for me is the frequency with which I meditate. Now, I'm not necessarily advocating meditation, and for God's sake don't go putting it on your to-do list ("Must learn to meditate!") But for me it is a fairly certain barometer of a loss of perspective. It is somewhat akin to cooking but never eating—I am carrying out the deed but missing the point of the exercise, living a life but not being in it. When I think I am too busy to meditate it's a pretty sure sign that I have climbed back onto the exercise wheel in my cage, the one that goes round and round and winds up nowhere.

I have been given more responsibility at work, so I have a whole new source of anxiety about getting things done. If I am not careful, this could take over my life. I will be working more hours, taking on more projects, supervising people, serving on committees (argh!). I hope that having this forum to write out what is going on will keep my honest about my obsessiveness and the degree to which I am able to keep living a life that is not consumed with getting the next thing done. You will be the first to know.