To Do List

                                                                                                To Do List

                                                                                       by Marco M. Pardi

“Any damned fool can write a plan. It’s the execution that gets you all screwed up.” James F. Hollingsworth. On Strategy: a Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, 4, 1982

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Not long into my first military assignment I decided to keep a daily to do list.  Looking back on this I suspect it was a way of asserting and maintaining my personhood in a strictly regimented environment.  So, while my on- duty time was almost entirely out of my hands, I was attempting to feel my off-duty time was more than just waiting to go back on duty. And, working exclusively at night – six nights on followed by three nights off, I potentially had time to engage in activities considered normal by most people.  But, finding “normal” was not easy at first.   

Of course, my vision of what I could possibly do was circumscribed by the reality of living in an enclave in the midst of an unpredictable and often hostile host culture. Off base, something as innocuous as allowing one’s gaze to fall on a female would result in serious attack, even death in a couple of cases I knew of.  Not that I ever listed gazing at females as something to do that day. And, finances and transportation curtailed a few plans.

On the desert at night I sometimes listened to Radio Moscow. The music was great. But I also heard of various Soviet 5 Year plans.  These seemed a good idea, and I wondered if I could make a 5 Year To Do list. Reality set in when I discovered even my 5 Day plans fell apart.  Oh, I took college credit courses in the Armed Forces program with University of Maryland and Air University.  I took courses I enjoyed though I had a vague but growing notion of becoming an Anthropologist some day.  But the bulk of my many courses, especially through Air University, were in the Intelligence field.  I also read at least one book per week. Albert Camus’ L’Etranger  and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon come to mind. I read Camus in the original French, but an English version has since come available. I do not recommend either book unless you have a strong resolve to not slit your own throat.

As time went on I experienced a great broadening and some pruning of my life views; it was more a matter of several doors opening rather than of a few doors closing.  But sometimes we seem to perceive the door after it is already closed to us.  A college housemate asked me to help him meet a graduation requirement of a 300 level course in Anthropology; his soon coming degree would be in Inter-Disciplinary Social Sciences.  I suggested an Old World Archaeology course I would be taking, saying I could help him get through it.

Not only did he get and read the textbooks before class started, he brilliantly excelled in the class and constantly raved about how he had found his true self.  Alas, with funds sufficient to cover only the remainder of his IDSS degree and the Draft breathing down his neck he could not basically start over to pursue his new reality. He graduated as a person with a degree in one field while his personhood was in another. The 4 Year Plan he hoped to march along turned into a forced march to a place he belatedly realized he did not want to go. He expressed dismay for years.

In recent years we’ve seen the impetus for such planning moving further down through the K-12 ranks.  My older granddaughter was drawn to medicine before entering high school.  Consequently, she enrolled in a special high school dedicated to the medical profession. Now, nearing her Summa Cum Laude graduation from University pre-med, she is considering various medical school options.  Along the way she has acquired related certifications and experience including international medical trips to underserved populations in Central America. But she is also considering time between college and med school.  Today I suggested her entry into the competition for a Fulbright or Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University; she is more than qualified for consideration and returning with that degree would open any medical school door. Fortunately, I see no indication she has any doubts about her calling; she has narrowed it down to Emergency Room physician, which can be pretty brutal depending on the setting.  Grady hospital in Atlanta is known locally as the Atlanta Knife & Gun Club.

In my experience, both as a student and a college instructor, I advocate at least a compulsory year between high school and college, preferably with international exposure.  I took my daughter to twelve countries before she finished high school. In my personal experience I left college in my freshman year because I could not possibly survive in a dysfunctional household and college elsewhere would not have freed me from that situation. The next four years of military service and travel enabled me to find my identity and to find, by listening and looking around, what I did not want to become.  The great majority of my best college students had also spent at least a year discovering what they did not want. Through that process, they brought to class perspectives, experience and insights they likely would not have otherwise gained.

Now in my retirement years – which are far busier than I expected, I again find myself making To Do lists from time to time.  I was a bit resistant to this at first, the Alzheimer’s image and all, but I show no signs of that.  In fact, in this current climate of chaos, dishonesty, uncertainty and outright unveiled hatred I’ve started pondering a To Not Do list. Topping the list would be NOT watching any news presentation by Trump, or his minions, especially Sean Spicer. But then, how would I get my information about their doings?  I implied in my just previous article that political leaders in a functioning democracy are in those positions as a result of the Informed Consent of the voters. In this most recent case it is pretty clear who did the informing: Alt-Right “news” outlets, corporate shills, religious leaders who could not understand they were being used, and, apparently, the Russians.

Following on the dictates of this cabal, I should next list, Discontinue writing and signing of environmental petitions, animal welfare petitions, and letters objecting to the policies of this regime in numerous areas. After all, without a giant check appended it is most unlikely any Republican recipient will even open my correspondence.

But such a To Not Do list would be precisely what this regime wants. Since it is abundantly clear the regime will do, or try, anything it wants despite the input from the public and the scientific community, the press briefings, the town halls, the rallies, and the “talking points” are merely theater – the same kind of theater found so appealing by the less educated who voted the regime into power.  The currency of this administration is ignorance.  The regime was brought to power through ignorance and it will remain in power through ignorance.

And so, I return to how I opened this piece: the keeping of a To Do list is a way of asserting and maintaining my personhood in a strictly regimented environment. I will continue to do so, and topping the list will be: Resist.

I earlier cited L’Etranger and Darkness at Noon as books about which I cautioned the reader.  But as I was writing this the Best Seller lists are showing the immense call for books such as 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Animal Farm.  I’ve read them and they are quite good. But they also enable the reader to displace the setting to a totally dystopian Other.  I now reassess my earlier caution against those two books above.  Put them atop your To Do List, and watch how your list suddenly grows before your eyes. There are those in power who are actively seeking to close more doors to us while opening only those they narrowly approve. To Not Do: Do not let yourself accept a life in which your personhood feels the importance and integrity of living one way but you decide to accept the dictatorial deceits and pressures to live another way.