At age 69, I just started reading Creating Your Best Life by Caroline Miller. The book is a guide to creating meaningful lists to help accomplish one’s goals. Several years ago I gave it to my son, Bobby, when he was struggling with drug addiction in an attempt to help him to refocus. Then the book came up recently in a conversation I was having with my daughter. I went to Bobby’s bookshelf, pulled it off and thought maybe it’s time I started to make some lists. Reading the beginning has been a bonus because Bobby has some notes in it which have been heartwarming to see. Not insights, so much, but a confirmation of who he was, not who his addiction wanted him to be.
I tend to fall into things, including some significant decisions. One was when my husband-to-be asked me where I wanted to get married, and I said, “Switzerland.” I’ve seen people put more thought into backyard barbeques. We did manage to pull it off though, pre-internet and pre-cell phone. Now I don’t go into a roadside diner without first whipping out my phone to check the reviews. I need as much information as I can get before I go in and order some eggs. In the pre-internet days, I was cool with showing up in a country I’d never been to, to get married. Neither of us spoke the language and much of the ceremony was in French. Pretty sure it was legit. Another was several years later when a friend in China wrote to tell us that the English teachers at her university were leaving, so why didn’t we apply. We were there in 5 or 6 months with a 2-year-old. Then, in my sixties, I got my masters because I was working at a university in PA and, as an employee, it was free. It would have been a missed opportunity if I didn’t. It’s in English and Language Arts and I did use it tutoring English until Covid hit. I don’t say all this to say look at me, because these things were spread out over 40 years. I say it because I’d like to be more proactive, which I suspect is true for many people. Life is busy. We all have some combination of spouses and kids, friends and jobs, pets, cars, yards and houses. All these things need time, care and attention. When they have issues, we have issues. We only have so much time and energy, so thinking about life lists and personalizing our goals sometimes stays on the back burner, if it makes it onto the stove at all. I’m at the point where I’d like to think about these things while I can still do something about them. For those of us who have children with unfinished lives, I think being proactive about goal setting and accomplishments takes on a greater urgency because now we include them too. It’s not too late to share things they liked or wrote. It’s not too late to accomplish some things that were important to them during their lifetimes. Like Martin Sheen in the movie, The Way, who finished his son’s pilgrimage on El Camino after his son died, it can help us to both better understand ourselves and our children.
My two children were born with very different temperaments. Hannah is linear; Bobby wasn’t. She does things in order, is independent and manages her life well. Looking back, I think sometimes that my life has managed me and I’m more like Bobby without the addiction. I think we both tended to focus more on the short term, the next few steps rather than the next few years. In high school, one of my gym teachers told my friend’s mom that he thought the whole school could collapse around me and I’d just keep walking. This is a level of nonchalance that I’m sure I never felt, especially in gym class, but I did wander off in directions that I hadn’t planned to go in. I didn’t grow up wanting to get married in Switzerland. I never thought about living in China until a visiting scholar from Shanghai ended up living with us, which is a whole other story. With Bobby, it wasn’t nonchalance that drove him, but he also went in very unexpected directions. When I write, I do it for both of us because writing was important to him, and he still has things to share. Reading Bobby’s margin notes In Creating Your Best Life confirmed this even more. In one list, he says a happiness booster for him was writing poetry, even though much of his poetry is dark and cathartic and we sometimes saw the depths of his sadness and even despair. But another happiness booster was being with friends and family, so we also often saw the better part of him, which was curious, creative, caring and funny. His poetry, like the following, poured out when he was alone.

Stay awhile and please get comfortable for                                                                                                                                    Life is an ever                                                                                                                                                                                          Repeating                                                                                                                                                                                               Love song.                                                                                                                                                                                                Our hearts deep wells,                                                                                                                                                                                and our souls are all up for sale.

Don’t give in no matter how                                                                                                                                                Appetizing                                                                                                                                                                                                The dark bids, dark dark bids, dark                                                                                                                                                Bids                                                                                                                                                                                                              Get                                                                                                                                                                                                                  If one must be a slave to fate,                                                                                                                                                                  Let the gods hear cries of                                                                                                                                                     Destructive dissonant resistance.

No retreat                                                                                                                                                                                          Revolt!                                                                                                                                                                                                            Leave demons behind an iron door                                                                                                                                            Deadbolt!                                                                                                                                                                                                    Leave destructive distractions and                                                                                                                                  Detractions                                                                                                                                                                                            Confined!                                                                                                                                                                                                      Tied down on the dirty floor,                                                                                                                                                                    Release and without defeat, nor drowning,                                                                                                                                      Veni Vidi Vici                                                                                                                                                                                              Tumult!                                                                                                                                                                                                                -Bobby Young