What Were You Thinking?! Worries and Checklists.

“Some of the secret joys of living are not found by rushing from point A to point B, but by inventing some imaginary letters along the way.”—Doug Pagels

As I boarded the plane to Panama two weeks ago, excited to visit my cousins, celebrate a wedding, and catch up with the family, I was stressing. Stressing about school starting, college applications, writing essays, summer homework, and taking the ACT—again.  

I thought about all that I needed to get done and started making checklist after checklist after checklist, just praying I would be able to get it done by the time school started. After a fourteen hour travel day full of reading and writing and checking off checklists, we finally arrived in Panama!

We made it through customs, arrived at the hotel and then got ready for a family dinner. It was wonderful to see my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who I only get to see about once a year; we had a great time catching up over our favorite Panamanian meal—Arroz con pollo.

But in the back of my mind were checklists, checklists, checklists until a conversation with my new cousin-in-law, who is eighteen years old and whose sister was getting married to my cousin that weekend, gave me something new to think about.

As we were greeting each other, her mother said “she’s the next one to get married!” So we jokingly asked, “do you know the guy yet?” assuming she had been dating someone since her freshman year of high school and knew that they were bound to be married. To our surprise she responded, “Nope!” The Panamanian tradition, which my cousins and aunt followed, is that the women get married between eighteen and twenty-three, to men that are typically a few years older.

I imagined the kind of pressure on her, and what was running through her mind as she enters her freshman year of college. Will she follow the Panamanian tradition and continue her studies? Will she follow tradition and end her studies? Will she abandon the tradition and wait to get married? Will she get married?

I thought about our different pressures and realized that though we both have long to-do lists, we were there to enjoy her sister’s wedding to my cousin. So I let my checklists go and decided to live in the moment.

Letting go of the checklist and allowing myself to enjoy the wedding and the time with my cousins was a REALLY good choice. I was able to dive into the culture of the weekend, doing my best to keep up with the Spanish, tour around Panama City with my cousins, and dance to the great Latin music at the wedding. It was a blast!

 On the plane ride home, I picked up the weight that I had brushed off my shoulders for the weekend and got things done. It felt even better to get my stuff done on the airplane because I knew that I had lived the weekend to the fullest and really enjoyed my time! I realize that while checklists are helpful and necessary for me to get things done, it is a good idea to let them go sometimes and just enjoy the moment, as long as I come back to them later.

So with all of these worries that I have about school and that my new cousin-in-law has about keeping tradition, I find that letting them go once in a while and exploring beyond the checklist makes for a much happier eighteen year old girl.

More soon,

Sami