The Infinite List: Poem Analysis

The Infinite List “Maybe this was it. Maybe this was as far as he got. He’d had it in mind to sit cross- legged against the boulder at the top of the hill, but really what difference did it make?” (George Saunders, The 10th of December, 20) These past few months have been some of the hardest of my life. If I had known they would be this difficult, maybe I could have prepared myself by going into them with a different mindset, different attitude, I don’t know, something. But when summer ended and my lifeguarding responsibilities were dwindling down, I thought that this would be the year. This will be the year I actually do what I want and get things accomplished. I wasn’t doing cross country or track anymore, I had an amazing new violin teacher who would lead me to the path of greatness (college hopefully) and I had a

I went along with it, but I memorized it the way I memorized “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost; just for the grade and plus it sounded cool and smart and sophisticated to have a poem memorized. But now I look back at this poem and realize that this is very similar to David Foster Wallace’s everyday choice advice. Our attitude towards our choices affects the way we act. My attitude going into this year was that it was going to be the most amazing, fun-filled, last year of childhood. And when responsibilities started piling up, I shoved them aside, because they blocked the view of what I thought was supposed to be my future. I was looking at it all wrong. These responsibilities and problems on a list were not blocking me. They were in my path though, and they were stacking and building up for me to accomplish and climb like stairs. Only when I am done with some of the bullets on the list and the tasks start to level off will I be able to see what actually lies ahead for