How do you eat an elephant?

On March 14 2006 · 1 Comment · In Diary

What do you want to do with your life? Well, if you have a list, you can record it on 43 Things, a web site specifically designed for recording your goals and sharing them with other people who are also postponing doing anything about them while they piss about on the Internet. Some of the more interesting things people have decided to record are

  • Truly forgive the people that have hurt me
  • Figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life
  • Dance in the moonlight with my Mr Right
  • Write a symphony

Not too ambitious, then, if you think that life is actually like a Mills and Boon book. Forgiving people is very much a decision based on the situation, and some people just don’t deserve forgiveness. Finding out what you want to do with the rest of your life would be a great trick, and I’d love to hear from anyone who thinks they’ve worked that one out – usually the problem is that they found God and they think that’s given them all the answers. Dancing in the moonlight with Mr Right is likely to end up being Stumbling around the back garden with Mr Right Now. To be fair, writing a symphony is a doddle. I’ve written four this week and it’s only Tuesday.

Henry David Thoreau said:

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

That isn’t pessimism – that’s life. The people who list something like ‘write a symphony’ will never write it. They write it because it’s a pipe dream, and simply the act of writing down that they want to write a symphony serves to do nothing more than make them feel like someone who would write a symphony if they could. To do lists that include items like ‘buy potatoes’ and ‘check oil’ are doable – but 43 Things is brimming with lists that won’t ever be ticked off. Lists of life goals often have the opposite effect they were supposed to – unfulfilled ambitions are like weights around your neck if you never figured out how to take the first simple steps towards them. I should know – I’ve got a list of aspirations as long as my arm, and I’m still trying to work out how to take step 1.

So, to this elephant eating thing – the saying goes that you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Richard Herring quite reasonably points out that it simply isn’t practical, or ethically sound, to go eating elephants. I’d also have to ask why elephants should be used in so many expressions. No-one has shown me any evidence that elephants have very good memories, so I assume someone only made the elephant comment out of desperation, because they were thinking about an animal with a big head. As for talking about the elephant in the room, that’s even more ludicrous – if there is an elephant in the room, no-one in their right mind is trying to ignore it, surely.


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  • http://theanswers42.blogspot.com/ Margaret

    Another anecdote – sorry.

    Met a young woman (about twenty) who told me she was ‘a writer’. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and what do you write?’ There was a pause. ‘I’ve got lots of ideas, but mainly I’m planning a novel.’ ‘So,’ I said, ‘when do you write? Do you get up early or stay up late to write undisturbed?’ She didn’t seem to like this line of questioning. After mumbling something about waiting for inspiration to strike, she changed the subject. We were planning her wedding to man about ten years older than her. They’d met on a holiday beach somewhere.

    A few weeks later, she sent a poem she’d written for the occasion. Yes, it was terrible. Maybe she could have become a writer, if she’d learned to punctuate properly and her grammar had improved, but mainly if she’d stopped using that pathetic excuse that she was waiting for inspiration. J K Rowling didn’t wait for inspiration. Neither did most other successful authors. They just got on with it, and churned out several thousand words a day until they’d finished.

    So, when it comes to lists of unfulfilled ambitions, there’s only one thing to be said – no, sorry, two things. If it’s doable, do it, and procrastination is the thief of time. I keep telling myself both of these things.