A few things to consider before writing the list of “50 Things to do before I die”

The Unknown Journey

In the book “Navigating The Ship of You” I explore the unknown-ness of Life and how, through navigating well, we can step into the unknown and come back having made it known.

Every day contains a vast amount of “unknown” and in order to gain the most for ourselves from the day we need to journey well. And a crucial part of journeying well comes in attending the present moment, for every present moment IS the journey – unlike the past, or the future.

Of course, part of today’s journey might involve some preparation for tomorrow’s journey – and if we do not attend well to that preparation, when tomorrow finally arrives then that “today’s journey” will unfold for us in a different way than we might have thought – yesterday!

Planning for tomorrow is fine - provided we understand that when it arrives it becomes another unknown and unfolding today.

And therein lies the paradox – the mystery of Life if you like – and our preparation, however that might be, is all about how we might be navigating.  

Finite

One of the crucially finite things we need to remember about Life, of course, is that ALL of our roads lead not to Rome – but to our Final Resting Place.

As a result, we can realise that all the roads and all the journeys are and have been of THE most paramount importance to us – and that that importance has filtered out to those we love and those we influence. It is not difficult to conclude that the more roads travelled and the more journeys undertaken – the fuller and richer all our lives will be as a result.

We often hear of the rueful catalogues of regrets and missed opportunities from people at the end of their lives. All the “I wish I hads ...” and the things they would have done differently, are testament to the relevance of perhaps how they could’ve been more contenders in the game of Life and not mere spectators; how they could’ve been better at Navigating their Ship of You.

By the same token, the lists of “Fifty things to do before I die” that abound, also are a reminder that we forever dream to lift our noses from the Grindstone in order to put some self-directed perspective into our lives – Before it is too late!

We were never born with that Grindstone, but we looked at it and were told it was our salvation – and then in true Faustian manner we have sold our souls to it. The irony of our “50 Things” lists is that they are an attempt­ to buy back our souls by giving us an imaginary glimpse of some uplifting experiences we may (or may not) get to do.

Re-Confide

However, buying back our souls is very much a here and now thing, rather than compiling a lexicon of the best future climactic moments.

The first thing we need to realise is that we haven’t actually sold our souls – we have lost touch with them. We have ceased to confide in them to such a degree that we have trusted our confiding to more temporal and everyday things. When we are unsure about the “unknown” of days and our security as we journey, we go for the comforting option of travelling to the “known” instead.
And here’s the thing about the “known” – it is VERY ordinary!

When we go for re-opening our dialogue with our soul, in a spiritual sense, we start to notice how that confiding gives us the confidence to journey, daily, into the “unknown” – to enrich our lives in real time without having to compile a list of a mere 50 future climactic moments.

The opposite of the ordinary is the Extraordinary. And in terms of our souls, would it not be a better thing to dare, for –as we know - Who Dares Wins!

So, allow your soul to dare,
to sail out toward the unknown region.
To venture across where there is
neither ground for the feet nor any path to follow.

There is no map, nor guide, until the one that is yet to be fashioned
by the work of your own eyes and hands.

More than all of your undreamt dreams await fulfilment in that region,
that once inaccessible land.

So loosen your ties, weigh anchor,
and feel the wind filling your sails.
For once you dare to choose to become your own Navigator,
then every day you can set course for some amazing places.

You can be a contender, not just a mere spectator.