Plans

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We associate the word with such pleasant connotations and look forward to planning ahead, creating a future and all other happy and wonderful things. Little do we realise that we are but a faint shimmer in the vast mirage that is life. How insignificant we truly are and above all how fickle are our plans.

I can no longer say ‘plans’ without a terrible loathing creeping in to my voice.  Vast amounts of time and energy have been invested in coming up with various plans and ideas and an even greater amount has gone in to dealing with the repercussions and disappointments constantly associated with the failure of each plan to be correctly executed or achieved. It is quite obvious that I am either not a very good planner or we are not meant to spend an infinite amount of time planning.

Being the ever so realistic person that I am I have chosen the latter option. Why do we plan? We want to feel as though we have some sense of control in our lives. We’d rather believe that we are in control of our destiny instead of accepting the fact that we are hurtling around the sun at about 100 000 km/h with no idea when we might collide with some asteroid. So we plan… we decide when we will wake up the next morning, we decide what career path we will follow, who we will marry, when we will get married,  how many kids we will have, where we will live and so on and so forth. The list is endless.

What saddens me most is how easily all these plans can fall apart. In one swift motion life comes swooping in through your doorway and you find that everything you have planned has suddenly fallen to pieces and you are left with nothing. With everything you ever envisioned for your future blown out the window you are suddenly left with no idea where to go. You are left meandering through the meadow and well… simply put… you have no future.

Or so you think. That is the thing with the future, we can never determine how it will pan out no matter how much we plan and prepare for it. It will always elude us and remain unattainable. Regardless of the fruitless hours spent planning for your future you will always find yourself at some point with your plans dashed to the ground and a terrible sense of disappointment.

The answer is simple. Don’t plan. Why not just accept that life has some plan for you and irrespective of what you want it will only give you your due share. If you can accept that fact you no longer feel the need to plan every big and supposedly important moment in your life. After all it is the unplanned and spontaneous moments in our lives that leave us with the best memories.

Planning for every eventuality will see you miss the chance to find yourself lying on the grass on a glorious day and just being content. If you had to think back on all your best memories you would realise that most of them occurred through some random twist of fate. Forgetting your keys on a seemingly random day could result in a whole new experience, a whole new lease on life. Had you planned each detail you would have found yourself missing out on one of the best experiences of your life.

Life is fleeting and time waits for no man but at the same time, if we spend our entire lives planning when exactly are we living?