Lists

I have all of these thoughts zipping around in my head like so many gnats.  I can't really see them until they're right in front of me, and then they're gone again before I know it, to be replaced by other thoughts buzzing into view.  I know that I should try to capture them, write them down on paper before they zip off into the atmosphere again, but my spirit is disinclined.  I already have far too much paper in my life for paper lists to actually do me any good, and for various reasons, electronic lists and I just don't get along.

It's disconcerting to think about all the wonderful thoughts I've had and then lost: all of the great ideas, all of the meaningful insights, all of the good intentions...

This morning I tried.  I realized that orgaizing my thoughts by writing them down in list form wasn't going to help if I couldn't remember where my lists were (or even that I had lists).  So I co-opted a composition book, still half empty from last year's social studies, cut out the used pages, and started making lists.  I even began, on the first page, with a list of lists: sort of a table of contents for my unruly thoughts. 

I didn't get very far.  Those gnatty thoughts proved elusive when I attempted to snatch them, which, of course, was enough to convince my spirit that it had been justified in its reluctance.  But I suppose this is progress.  At least now I know where to look when I remember the shadow of an idea, when I remember, oh yes, I had an idea once; I wonder what it was?  Perhaps the shadow I remember will be one of the gnats I was successful in documenting in my book of lists.

In the meantime, this is one more place in my life where I must learn to grant myself grace.  I will think wonderful thoughts, amazing thoughts, and some of them will be so fleeting I will never think them again.  Some of them I will never get the chance to act upon.  And some of them, I will.