On my list of "60 Things To Do Before I Turn 60" next year, item #5 admonishes me to buy a new book each month, read it, and then pass it directly on to someone else to enjoy. September is now nearly halfway through and before it comes to its own version of a screeching halt in just about two weeks, I've got some serious reading to catch up on. Thus, I have found myself picking up the pace as I enjoy the very interesting book called "Lists to Live By".
When I first looked at it on the back shelf of the display at our school a few weeks ago, I was immediately intrigued by its title. As a lifelong maker of lists, I was very interested to see what the authors' version of "bulleted" items would be like. The table of contents showed 14 different subjects that the lists would cover with everything from success and friendship to health and wisdom. The book's format had a real appeal to me as a reader. The 329 pages contained within were not crammed full of senseless wordage, pages of a manuscript that would be hard to read or digest. Rather, they were filled with simple lists of ways to make life easier and more meaningful. I couldn't pay for it quickly enough.
An extra bonus to reading a book like this is that you don't even have to read it in any particular order. Not like there is any beginning-middle-ending kind of sequence. It's a book of lists for crying out loud. So when I came across lists that really had no real purpose in my life at this time, I could just skip right on over them. The sections about not letting a new baby drive couples apart and the countdown to college were lists I should have read a couple of decades or so ago. I'm "ok" with those two now.
Perhaps it is because I am growing older or maybe because I miss my old home back on the prairies of Kansas from time to time, but my favorite of lists so far is the one that proclaims the things that we should feel nostalgic about. The definition for nostalgia includes synonyms such as wistful, romantic and sentimental. It is really a combination of the feelings of gladness and sorrow and I guess perhaps where the term bittersweet may well have come from. I certainly have felt nostalgic about many things in my life and moving 611 miles away just exacerbated that feeling for me. Pretty sure that there is nothing wrong with that kind of feeling. It is what it is.
The list contains 16 things to consider and the 4 that were the most meaningful to me were these~
1. A quiet visit to the place you were raised. Haven, Kansas
The best place EVER for a kid to have grown up in. To walk down Kansas Avenue and remember all of the shops and businesses that used to be there. To see the Farmer's Co-Op Elevator as the sun sets in the Kansas sky. To imagine the young girl I used to be in the "land of long ago and far, far away".
2. Standing beside the grave of a loved one, a family member or a special friend. The Halstead Cemetery or the Laurel Cemetery at Haven. How many times have I gone to either of those places? More than I can imagine. I learned early on in life to honor the dead as well as the living. Graveyards are a sacred place to me, places to be treated with dignity and respect. Memories, tears shed, stories told once again. Some of the most heartfelt and meaningful conversations that I have had with my parents were as I knelt at their grave markers with tears running down my face.
3. Certain poems, certain melodies. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, the theme song from the movie "St. Elmo's Fire. I cannot remember half of the time where I put my car keys, cell phone, or power cords on any given day but I can remember the words in "total" for most every song ever sung in the 70's or 80's. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes is a good example and that's a long, long song my friends. St. Elmo's Fire was recorded at a time when I really was just beginning to figure out who I really was in life and the direction that I would go. I was a single mom of a tiny little 4-year old and whenever that song came on the radio back home on one of the Wichita stations, it inspired me and motivated me to not give up.
4. Saying good-bye. I do not.
There are more lists to go through, things like how to take control of your time and why on earth we seem to procrastinate. In the days ahead I will be reading them and hopefully glean some understanding about life and myself along the way. I have to tell you, I'm marking this book on the inside as I highlight the "good stuff". It seemed strange at first to do that, you know? This marking up a book was not the way Mrs. Seaboldt back Haven Grade School would have wished for her library patrons to have done. But times changed. Cool highlighters came into being. That's all I have to say about that.
It will be so fun to pass this book along to the next reader at the end of the month of September. This one is going back home to Kansas to a good friend of mine who lives up in the Flint Hills area in the lovely city of Manhattan. He's a good guy and an avid reader of all kinds of literature. So Dennis Ulrey, clear up a spot on the old bedside table for "Lists to Live By", because before you know it, the postal person will be delivering it right to your door. Feel free to highlight in it as well my friend before you pass it along to the next one. I already know which list you will choose to call your favorite :)
It's the teacher in me that says this~Please dear friends continue to read no matter what it is or how long you should choose to do it each day. Read to your children or read to yourself. Just remember to read. Books kept in pristine condition, tucked away on a library shelf are not being used for their intended purpose in life. They were never meant to be collectors of dust. They were meant to be read.
Visiting the Coburn Free Library in Owego, New York back in the spring of 2013. It is a wonderful old library that reminded me so much of the first library that I ever went into as a child growing up on our family's farm in south central Kansas. I love the smell of good books :)
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