The road to hell: The book of good intentions
Tuesday, 16 June 2026
Mike White is a senior writer and columnist.
OPINION: Secondhand shops are thrilling places.
They’re places of bargains, anti-consumerist ideology, and occasional mystery.
They’re places to revel in the reuse, recycle, reduce mantra.
They’re places providing small windows into others’ discarded lives, which we peer through, while sifting shelves for a replacement wine glass for the one you just broke, or a cheap chest of drawers for the spare bedroom.
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But last weekend, our favourite op shop was a place of semi-sadness.
My partner spotted it: a spiral-bound notebook from Whitcoulls, with glowing orange cover.
And on the cover, someone had written in decisive permanent marker: “Husband Daily Intentions.”
The handwriting was fluid and clear, and they’d appended frilly underlining to add emphasis.
My partner brought the notebook over to show me as I rifled through racks of winter shirts, and we stared at it and each other with a mix of bemusement and amusement.
But that became slight sadness, when we flipped over the cover, and every page was blank.
So we stood there, between a rack of ski jackets, and a table of knick-knacks, and tried to divine the notebook’s possible story.
Was it a wife gently prodding her husband off the couch to do more and better?
Was it part of some post-counselling agreement, where the therapist had suggested tangible tokens and acts of “agency” to improve their relationship?
Was it some idea one of them read about in a self-help manual, or in a lifestyle magazine article that was spliced between recipes for winter tagine and “The Best Ever Guacamole”?
Or was it a revitalised man, determined to turn over a new leaf in his life, one page at a time?
Whatever it was, he didn’t get far, the idea stalled on the start line, the enthusiasm for change perhaps evaporating under the pressure to reinvent himself.
So the notebook remained untouched, unused, the best of intentions unwritten.
And then it was jettisoned, along with a carload of other domestic detritus.
But maybe it was for the better.
What’s that saying? “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
If that’s the case, maybe the husband dodged disaster. You can see him standing there, biro in hand, going, “Nah, I know where this leads…”
And you could have some sympathy for him baulking: None of this mindfulness malarkey was in the marriage vows he’d made.
I mean, he had to come up with something every morning. He had to be “intentional” EVERY day. That’s what the good notebook demanded.
From the moment he woke, expectation bore down on him: what are my intentions going to be today - other than a salami sandwich at lunch, and watching the Warriors on telly?
Faced with the same pressure and blank page, I’d have frozen and backed out.
What are you meant to write?
“I will separate the recycling and put the bin out.”?
“I will mow the lawns before it rains”?
“I will not yell at the neighbour’s cat trying to kill birds”?
“I will yell at the neighbour’s cat trying to kill birds”?
I mean, you can’t constantly come up with inspiring action plans. You can’t conceive of something fresh and incisive every single day.
He was a humble husband, not Stephen bloody Hawking.
Prescribing your path on paper each morning promised a life of plodding calculation.
Where was the room for spontaneity? For doing things on a whim. For being open to random or unexpected opportunity. For being free to go whichever way the wind blows you.
All this would be abandoned for a scheduled life. A life straitjacketed by banal projection. A life that followed a plan scratched into stone tablets, or a Whitcoulls diary.
A life structured around strictures.
I can only imagine how exhausting this would all be: The thinking time; the worry that you might stray outside your self-imposed barriers as you drive everso cautiously along life’s road; the guilt of backsliding or failing to meet goals.
Surely life was meant to be more reactive, more relaxed than this? Surely we don’t have to compose the score for the beat we will march to? Surely we can just get on with living without analysing ourselves to pieces?
Recently, I was chatting with a mate who’s got advanced cancer, about the treatment options he’s faced with.
One was more radical, but could prolong his life significantly, something he was obviously not averse to.
He mentioned his wife would also be keen on this prospect.
“She’d be quite happy if I kept on chopping the firewood and registering the car.”
I suggested these would be fine words on any man’s tombstone, underneath the bits about being loved by many, and taken too soon.
“He chopped firewood, and kept the car registered,” my friend repeated. “He lived a full life.”
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