What it means to be in listed company 

‘I tried to ignore lists this year, but in the age of the smartphone, it is impossible to do so.’
| Photo Credit: cueapi

There is something about the last month of the year that unleashes the list-maker in us. It is widely known from one end of my table to the other that I am one of the least organised men in the world, yet in December, I too have this urge to make lists – from movies not watched and books not read to promises not kept. I tell myself every year that this time I will not read articles on the ‘word of the year’ or ‘person of the year’, but that’s another promise not kept.

It might have something to do with the inner (and outer) journalist in me. For years, I have contributed such articles as ‘greatest moments in sport this year’ and ‘books that captured the zeitgest’. Editors are thus able to send their magazines off to press in advance so they can take the last week of the year off. 

I tried to ignore lists this year, but in the age of the smartphone, it is impossible to do so. Yesterday, for example, I received a message saying ‘Memories’ with photographs taken this year, which my phone thinks I value the most. At what point my phone became my friend I have no idea, nor do I remember where or why some of the pictures were taken, but there it is. 

Perhaps even inanimate objects have this list-making imperative. Or worse, my phone is more animate than I suspected.

Meanwhile this year ends much the same way as previous ones did. I still haven’t read War and Peace, and the potholes on our roads are still attracting vehicles. Even Oxford’s Word of the Year (well, two words actually, but what does Oxford know?) – brain rot – is from Thoreau’s Walden, written 170 years ago. The more things change etc.

We make lists, wrote Umberto Eco because we don’t want to die. A later philosopher, Taylor Swift, has said that one thing she never tries to do is make lists. That covers the range from the compulsive list-makers to the thoroughly listless, although Swift probably has a list of her greatest hits.

I don’t think Eco meant that those who don’t make lists simply want to die. Or even if we kept writing lists of websites or countries visited every day of our lives, we would become immortal. It is far more subtle. Not wanting to die seems to be a fundamental human desire, even if guaranteed not to be satisfied.

The quest for immortality has driven civilisation for centuries. All of us have coping mechanisms to put off the inevitable — like the Vizier’s daughter who postpones her execution by telling her king incomplete stories so she is kept alive to complete them the following day when she starts another story and leaves that unfinished.

This is how we got the Arabian Nights with its tales of Aladdin and others. The storyteller kept herself alive by narrating tales from her list. Eco was right after all.