Ah, the ubiquitous, apparently critical, and often reviled To-Do List!
It can be written in a tidy daily planner, on a calendar, in a digital space (or several), scrawled all over sticky notes, or running through your mind as an insistent ticker tape or an intermittent blasted scattershot. Maybe in all those forms! Maybe in completely unique ways that don't even occur to me!
But I can almost guarantee that you have at least one To-Do List that exists in your life.
Being a human at this point in history seems to require it. Life is busy! There is so much going on every day, and there are so many things to manage:
Work stuff. Home stuff. School stuff. Kid stuff. Pet stuff. Relationship stuff. Self-care stuff. Financial stuff. Appointments. Meetings. Bills. Bills. BILLS! And because we are so focused as a society on the construct of TIME, there are schedules, deadlines, and cutoffs, many of which are not dictated (or preferred) by us. There can be consequences for missing stuff! There is an apparent need to exercise the brain's executive functioning skills (regardless of whether that's a strength of yours or not) in order to triage, organize, and manage all the moving pieces. What a gargantuan, ever-evolving, endless job!
When the Ego Mind is in the driver's seat and has complete power over the To-Do List, everything is a problem to be solved. Judging what's most important and what needs to happen next is a high stakes action that requires lots of careful discernment. There is great potential for things to go very wrong at any moment. And because there is a separate solid YOU with agency and control over things, YOU are not only responsible for every decision you make, YOU are also always on the hook (at least on some level), when things go "wrong." That perspective feels urgent. It feels suffocating. It feels very closed and contracted. And when it looks like life only runs this way, we want out! So we procrastinate, scroll, eat, drink, drug, numb, complain, blame, or do whatever else we can not to feel so overwhelmingly boxed in, even for just a short time.
But what if, there is another way?
What if that brilliant, well meaning, yet overprotective Ego could be relegated to the status of backseat driver when it comes to your To-Do List? A voice to consider, but not to believe without question...? Not as the only voice, but as one that can be taken or left...?
What if, in those moments of "Oh my God, I have so much to do! I have to figure this out," you take several quiet moments, focus on your breath, and allow something other than Ego to drive...?
In those moments of mindful presence, in the direct sensory experience of NOW, what wants to happen next?
Where is the subtle, ever-present flow of Life drawing you? Where are you being led?
Just take a few moments. See what else is here that is not so loud, dramatic, and attention-stealing. Focus there. See what comes from a place of truthful ignorance of what is to come in the next second.
Sink deeper and ask for help. If you begin to learn the subtle language of silent stillness, maybe it will show you the way. Or at least, a way. And it my experience, that feels a whole lot different (better) than believing Ego is the only one capable of driving.
And if the mind is loud and completely unwilling to relinquish its seat of power, pull a Gandalf in the Mines of Moria and just go in the direction where the air smells least foul...