A friend of mine used to keep these regular lists. He listed all kinds of things about his life. It was a helpful reflection for him and, often, a source of interest or amusement for those of us who saw them. He gave it up a while ago, but yesterday sent one to a group of us and I have been thinking about for hours. I was doing some especially productive pondering while I was shaving in the shower this morning (side note: I flippin’ love shaving in the shower and I highly recommend that those of you who shave give it a go). This was the list he sent. I take no credit for it and I did edit it a bit for clarity.

List of Things I did to Waste Time While in College, listed In no particular order, and excluding drinking, etc..

1. Wall Ball, I think was the name, soccer on a squash/racket ball court, with misses leading to being placed against the front wall and shot at from point blank range.
2. How many plates can you eat, at dinner, times through the line in the dining hall.  Only do-able when you are 20, and playing a serious number of sports.
3. Some incredibly stupid game when we threw a tennis ball at a semi-enclosed light on the ceiling in the dorm lounge.
4. Flipping through college’s actual, print and paper, face book, making decisions about who was attractive, pre-Facebook.
5. Watching Magnum PI reruns after dinner, think every night we did this. Note: there were all of 3 stations on our dorm TV.
6. Saturday college football, Sunday NFL football.
7. A handful of incredibly stupid video games, including an early version of Tetris.
8. Hang out in the “spa,” with an order of nachos, and semi-pretending to study.
9. Go downtown to either make a late-night run to Dunkin’ Donuts, or to buy CDs.
10. This one was not my thing, but I had friends who tried to memorize MLB box scores, and then would quiz each other on them.
11. Play name that tune, which involved going to someone’s room and having the DJ put in random CDs from their collection, play for like 3 seconds, see who could guess the band and the song.
12. Stay up for days on end, then sleep for extended periods of time.

I admit I participated in some of these things, although not all of them. I did not play Wall Ball as I was not a soccer player and it would have meant simply getting pummeled by a high speed soccer ball. It feels a bit odd to reflect on judging people’s appearance in the paper face book but I did participate in that common practice. I would like to think we all have grown out of such behavior by this point but I can only speak for myself.

What struck me the most about this list, however, is the title. All of these are listed as a waste of time. But are they?

I recently listened to a Radiolab podcast called The Secret to a Long Life. It suggested that novelty can help us stretch time, that by doing new things, or by doing the same things in different ways, we can experience them with an extended sense of time. The extreme extent of this would mean that if you could do novel things constantly your life would seem to last forever. I felt pretty good after listening to this since I am regularly trying to do things differently. I try to take a different route home from the office. I put on my right sock first, instead of my left. I whisk the pudding with my left hand. These are all small things, but they demand that I pay attention more.

If you have ever experienced any kind of accident–car crash, falling off a ladder, getting hit hard in a sports game–you may have experienced time slowing down. Time does not actually slow down, but because we are experiencing something new/exciting/traumatic/dangerous our minds pay attention to more details than they do during other experiences. When you drive the same route every day you may find yourself miles down the road and realize that you hardly noticed the place you have been passing through. But when your car slides off the road or hits another car, your mind registers all the details of the event–you notice more and the time is more full.

The key here (and the lesson of the podcast) is that time will seem slower, our lives will seem longer really, when we experience things where we pay attention, whether that is by our own design or it is thrust upon us. The things that stand out for me in my long life are the things that were new, or different, or unexpected, good and bad. I remember the very first time I kissed my wife, but the hundredth time? I am afraid I do not. I can remember being transported in an ambulance, and standing on top of Black Mountain alone for the sunrise, but what I had for lunch on October 1st? Um, nope.

To me, the things that make life worth living, the things that make life full, the things that teach us the most powerful lessons, the things where we feel the most, the things that make this human life a thing at all, are all of those things we experience in detail, those experiences where we pay attention. We work to make a living so, I hope, we can have a life. Life lies in our attention.

So, the list. Most of the things on this are things that require paying attention. OK, maybe not watching football so much, or sleeping for extended periods, but most of these things are memorable because they were not mundane. They were novel. And having experiences like that is the point. To live a good life, to live a life worth living, requires that we do things like the things on this list.

I am not going to go out and try to get a Wall Ball league started, but I am going to get up early and go for a run in the dark with the wind blowing snow in my face while I sing a song from Lemonade Mouth. I am not going to memorize box scores but maybe I will go see an MLB game in a city I have never visited. And I should try black pepper on vanilla ice cream–I hear that is amazing.

Thank you, my friend, for posting this list. It helped me to remember some of the joys of my earlier days, and it got me mulling over about how to live a joyful life. Heck, all that thinking and even writing this are things I just may remember in future years. After I get some work done (that making a living thing actually matters, people), I need to find me some Tetris to play.