I've
been thinking about why people are inclined to make lists, both physically and
philosophically. This is my theory: Our lives are lists. They're catalogs of
people we've encountered, events we experienced passively, and events we
caused. A lot of these components are random, but we spend years trying to come
up with a title for the compilation in order to pull it all together and give
it a common theme.
I was going to add that we're often shaped by whether we try to make our lives into "things to do" or "things to obtain" lists. But for a lot of us, experiences and accomplishments *are* things to obtain. Also, a person whose primary goal is to amass things may not be materialistic; they may have very few resources and be concerned with survival. So being able to focus on non-survival based goals is a privilege.
The "life is a list" theory makes our smaller lists very meta. Daily goals and itinerary are lots of little collections inside a much larger one.
I was going to add that we're often shaped by whether we try to make our lives into "things to do" or "things to obtain" lists. But for a lot of us, experiences and accomplishments *are* things to obtain. Also, a person whose primary goal is to amass things may not be materialistic; they may have very few resources and be concerned with survival. So being able to focus on non-survival based goals is a privilege.
The "life is a list" theory makes our smaller lists very meta. Daily goals and itinerary are lots of little collections inside a much larger one.
