The one day list

Chris didn’t expect to feel bored when he retired. He’d imagined pruning hydrangeas, conquering Ulysses, photographing gorillas. Instead he blew out 65 candles and found himself the next day staring out his window, feeling nothing.

For years, he’d added time-consuming hobbies, expensive trips and airy fantasies into a “one day” doc.

Items on the list ranged from the profound, like “become a father” — Chris never had any children — to the mundane, like “buy a Cartier watch” — Chris still found it too pricey.

Every aspiration conjured worlds he could one day inhabit. Some were vast and bustling, buzzing with voyages and challenges. Some were enterprising and domineering, inspired by the epic biographies of great men. Others went downward, to depths of analysis and intellectuality that would take a lifetime to reach.

But now that he finally opened the doc, none of the items on the list seemed appealing to him.

What was reading Ulysses for? His yearning to finish it had been conspicuous; tainted with superfluous socialite reflexes. Learning German? Accessing Kant’s original intent seemed a minor payoff relative to the arduous task of memorizing declinations.

At 65, he no longer cared to be validated.

He’d had his share of gasps and claps from the audience, had gradually moved backstage. He had walked down a thousand corridors, stopping when the walk no longer felt enjoyable. Placing pins on a map for the places he cared to visit had started to feel arbitrary, like opening a dictionary at random and finding the name of a complicated chemical compound.

Flipping absent-mindedly through the pages of the “one day” list, all Chris could see was his younger self staring back at him. The young man seemed afraid, gauche and keen. This was a face of a stranger.

Feeling nothing, he closed the doc, sat in a chair and looked out his window at a sparrow.

He used to think he’d be like this bird in old age. Tweeting and flying unencumbered.

He used to imagine how crisp the air would feel on his feathers, after everything on the list was ticked off. He imagined friends too, migrating in groups perhaps, a couple times a year, or singing each to each, hanging on an electric line.

But a bird is restless and Chris was craving rest.

Looking out the window, his eyes moved from the sparrow to the tree. The tree had a complete unwillingness to ideate, to design or invent, that made Chris feel safe. Could he be like a tree in his old age? Soaking in the sun in summer, sleeping for most of the day in winter; in spring, maybe harboring a color or two.

A tree among many, he’d look at passers-by and friends, quietly observing, silently content. He could make himself useful too, if someone needed shade, or something sturdy to lean on?

Yes. Chris could be an immovable, content tree.

Unapologetically strong, confidently upright, unashamedly still. His feet firmly planted, and his head to the Sun.