indirectly addressing vars in Python

[Ross]

Forgive my newbieness - I want to refer to some variables and indirectly 
  alter them.  Not sure if this is as easy in Python as it is in C.

Say I have three vars: oats, corn, barley

I add them to a list: myList[{oats}, {peas}, {barley}]

Then I want to past that list around and alter one of those values. 
That is I want to increment the value of corn:

myList[1] = myList[1] + 1

Is there some means to do that?.   Here's my little session trying to 
figure this out:

 >>> oats = 1
 >>> peas = 6
 >>> myList=[]
 >>> myList
[]
 >>> myList.append(oats)
 >>> myList
[1]
 >>> myList.append(peas)
 >>> myList
[1, 6]
 >>> myList[1]= myList[1]+1
 >>> myList
[1, 7]
 >>> peas
6
 >>>

So I don't seem to change the value of peas as I wished.  I'm passing 
the values of the vars into the list, not the vars themselves, as I 
would like.

Your guidance appreciated...

Ross.