13 April 2020; Making lists

Making Lists - Sacha Horton

One day she woke up and the morning air announced a new beginning. She had been looking forward to this for a while now. A breakthrough was looming, a great letting go of old ways to be with life.

As long as she remembered she had made lists, wishing lists, shopping lists, things-to-do lists, what to bring lists, inventory lists, chore lists, invitation lists, priority lists, activity lists, study lists, song lists, feeling & needs lists, lists of things that weren’t done yet, lists of lists, listing what was challenging to list and listing things into being.

There was often a moment in her thinking that would mark the birth of a list and it was exactly that small space in time that she was now so curious about. She had fallen in love with the potential of that space. She wondered why she had developed the need to stop the soupy moments of thoughts, feelings and ideas swimming around in her being? Was it fear of overwhelm that somehow pushed the solution in the shape of a list forward? Streamlining the soup, having control by putting on the ‘I got this’ hat that fitted so easily, the out-breath when the words rolled onto the paper and became a list of reassurance.

And now all she felt was resistance, no more leaning on the planning, no more guilt trips about unfinished lists, no, she now just felt intrigued by that space in time before the lists came into being, her everyday big bang moment in time.

This morning, a rite of passage unfolds, the sunlight dances on the wooden floor where she stands, naked and smiling. In front of her lays a cloak, she carefully wove every list she found in the house into this cloak of liberation. She picks it up, wraps the long-listed garment over her shoulders and she walks out into the new day. Covered in lists, she listens to the bird chorus and witnessed by nature, she reclaims her listless life.