The Coconut List

There are plenty of lists floating around right now. Gift guide lists, wish lists, grocery lists, and packing lists. Here’s a different kind of list I have been making for fifteen years. The Coconut List.

Every New Year’s Eve, I take a blank sheet of paper and write down my personal and professional goals. I fold it, seal it, and place it in an urn, and cover it with a coconut. One year later, I open it and see how what I wrote lined up with what happened. Sometimes the list feels like a victory lap. Sometimes it feels like a plot twist. Sometimes a goal quietly returns for another round.

The ritual began soon after I got married. My husband and I started doing it during the holidays without much planning. It has become a grounding moment each year when we read our lists, compare notes, and talk about the year ahead.

My parents gave it to me when I moved into my first apartment. It is made from an old copper vessel that was once used to carry water in India. Mine is engraved with my father’s name. It was given as a wish for good luck, and it has traveled with me through every home since. For reasons I cannot explain, it lives on the kitchen windowsill. It felt like the perfect place to store it away.

Attached to the coconut is an Indian Hanuman pendant that represents courage and devotion. It was a wedding gift from my husband’s best friend, an Italian, who spent time in India. He added Padre Pio, an Italian priest known for healing. Two cultures meeting in one small symbol. We are not a religious family, more spiritual, and these pieces have always felt steady and meaningful.

The idea of a blank page has always spoken to me. It is a fresh slate. I often tell young people that their life is one big white piece of paper where they can draw the entire story. As I have grown older and life has become more complicated, I realized the page still applies. You keep drawing.

If you are not sure where to begin tackling the list, take a quick look at the wheel of life and rate each area of your life on a scale of 1-10, which will help you frame goals before you pick up a pen. My advice: Be honest, this list is for you, and no one has to read it but you.

Some years, I open the list and feel proud. Some years, the goals read like wishes. Over time, the themes shift. One day, maybe when I am really old, I hope to gather all the lists, assemble them into a book, and look back at the quiet story they have been telling about who I was trying to become. I feel that there will be some wisdom to draw from.

When my son was old enough, he started making his own list. It became our quiet family tradition and something I rarely talk about. This Substack feels like the right place to finally share it.

So this holiday season, with all the other lists piling up, try making a coconut list before December 31st. Coconut urn is optional :-)

Seal it. Forget it for a year. Then see what story you drew.