A To-Do List For The End Of The World
1. Forgive your past.
It’s important to begin with a thorough wipe of the slate because everything from here on out leaves no allowances for nostalgic feelings about what could have been, or deeply sentimental desires for do-overs.
2. Let yourself go.
Damn your gym routine if you dare and to hell with a diet (unless your life depends on it) – there might no longer be a point. But more importantly, stop holding yourself back from living without inhibition. Hold yourself to that.
3. Take small joys and make big adventures.
Be the kind of person who embraces the spontaneity of a mid-afternoon walk, travels halfway across a city in search of one raved-about dish that probably comes with a side of food poisoning, or breaks a longtime savings streak to pay for a wild weekend escape with shady-looking strangers across the border. This is your life now.
4. Have some faith (again).
Don’t do it because you’re scared of ending up in hell but because believing in something has its own kind of comfort. Make it all about yourself, not the people who may have judged you for being faithless. The age of forced worship and spiritual charades to please is over.
5. Make dressing up the occasion.
Time is running out, so save nothing for tomorrow – barely worn clothes, shoes still in their boxes, bags that haven’t seen the light of day, lipstick that’s supposedly too much. Give the world extraordinary looks on ordinary days.
6. Treat strangers like friends you’d love to have.
Do it by being kind, gracious, and listening to them like there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing. They might never become your friends but they should walk away feeling like the most important person in the world.
7. Talk to the other side, with respect.
Even if you believe that you’re the only right person left in the world, put your prejudice aside to have an open-minded conversation with the people who are supposedly wrong. No moralistic put-downs, no condescension. You’d be surprised what you might learn about your supposed truth in the light of contrast.
8. Be someone else for a while.
Attend a costume party, try role play (with someone you met on a now-deleted Telegram group), or switch from a mellow night owl to an annoyingly chirpy morning person. There’s no pressure – you can always take the mask off when you’re done.
9. Create yourself.
All the years of running away from aloneness and filling every impending silence with something, anything at all, are behind you for good. Celebrate the space to think and experiment by yourself, in your own way, for yourself, because you need time alone to create a self you can fall in love with.
10. Tell the truth.
Not your truth (questionable, privately held beliefs), the truth (actual facts of the case). You can’t make this up. You might not be thanked for it but you’d probably be grateful for it someday, if the future survives.
Sunrise, monkey, and duck as seen at Lakowe Lakes.