Most of us carry a list, written or not, of things we haven't gotten to. Ask it as a question and something else tends to answer: a conversation, an apology, a room in the house, a plan we stopped mentioning. It doesn't always arrive in the order you'd expect, and it's rarely the thing at the top of the list.
Why do I keep thinking about the things I haven't finished? What do I do with a list that never gets shorter? Is it okay to leave some things undone? Why does something half-done feel heavier than something I never started?
Open loops have a feel to them. A tightness behind the sternum, a held breath I only notice after the fact. Which undone thing is it that my body keeps returning to, even on the days my mind has moved on?
I used to treat everything unfinished as a failure of discipline. Some of it was things I never wanted to do, and some of it was things I'd been avoiding, and from the inside the two feel almost identical. How would I tell which is which?
There's another way to hear the word. Undone as in not yet finished, and undone as in come loose. What if something is still open because it was never mine to finish?
Not everything undone is ours to close, either. A conversation takes two people. A repair takes a willingness we can't supply for someone else. What is still waiting on me, and what is waiting on them?
At the end of most days there's a list of what didn't happen, and it comes with a small verdict. Who is reading it out? What would the same day sound like in a different voice?
I wrote about how often we act as though a better moment is coming, in You think you have time, and about what happens when we keep scanning for what's incomplete, in Nothing needs fixing. Especially not you.
If this one brought something up and you feel comfortable sharing it, I'd like to hear it. Private, under your name, or anonymous, whichever feels right to you.
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