‘We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, to have the life that is waiting for us’ – E.M. Forster
Looking for certainty in life is hardwired. We look for patterns, routines, form habits and create rituals so we can predict and perhaps control our lives and destiny. One of the tools we employ are to-do lists and catalogue of goals to achieve, some short-term, some for a lifetime.
Bucket lists, life-markers to reach at certain stages and benchmarks of where we should be are all ways in which we take inventory of our lives and therefore how we feel about ourselves. One of the hardest things to do is review the relevance of those lists and decide which ones to keep and which ones to let go.
Many of us operate better with time-restrictions and management, when we have a deadline, a calendar date or some other hard-stop to what needs to be done. We can also miss time-limits; flights, holidays, a performance commencing, and we deal with the consequences. What about forgoing our self-imposed objectives and plans? That it seems is much harder to do. It is also more liberating when you do.
Deciding when you have had enough of that lingering list or long-held aspiration is not giving up, is freeing yourself to pursue something else. Sometimes we hold on to expired ambitions to distract us from the present or the future, perhaps wondering what we would fret about if we moved on and left ideas behind. We can trust that if we have not accomplished what we intended to, it’s time to redirect our aim. Maybe our current lives do not reflect our past targets, or those lists were created out of “should’s” instead of “want-to’s.” If you can recall the relief when an outside force says, “time’s up” and you absolutely must stop, it may be because the stopping was mandatory, and your time was restricted. Our time is still finite, and we can choose when and how we reshape our to-do lists. With practice, saying “time is up” on dawdling projects allows us to happily anticipate accomplishing something more meaningful to the present.