Those that know me know that I'm a big planner. I love carrying around my little agenda book, making lists, crossing things off, etc. But a recent conversation with someone led me to question how much planning is TOO much planning?
Life is uncertain, that's for certain. No one expects to get hit by a car, or die in a plane crash, or get mauled to death by a Pit Bull. An interesting aspect of being human is that while we all know death is coming for each of us, we pretend it's not. If we truly believed we were going to die, we'd all quit our jobs, move to an island in the South Pacific, blow all of our money and think "Well, hell, I had fun!" But we don't. We go to school, we get jobs we don't like, we plan for good things, and never for bad things.
And I think that's ok. Sure, I could get hit by a car crossing Boylston street this afternoon. It could take me 5 years to get pregnant. My apartment could burn down next week. But, optimism tells me that none of those things will happen. If I thought they would, I would take a cab to school, start trying to get pregnant at 20, and buy a fireproof safe. Instead of spending excessive amounts of money on cab fare, trying to juggle having a baby in law school and shelling out the dough to fireproof my house, I just assume things will go well. I would rather live my life now, planning for good things to happen and enjoying myself and what little control I have over my life than making myself miserable in an effort to make my future better. The future will take care of itself! If I get hit by a car, I'll just get a cool cast. If I can't get pregnant, I'll adopt a baby. If my apartment burns down, I'll get to buy new clothes.
It's all good!
2 comments:
This week I plan on not planning things for next week. I think that's a good plan... You?
Actually, that seems quite existential. Yeah, we could all live on a south pacific or caribbean island somewhere. Or we could just pack up ouor snowboards and go work for cheap in the resorts so that we could just snowboard the rest of our lives. Either way, you are right. It would be more important to enjoy our lives in whichever way we see fit. As for me, heck, I just make sure that I have more good times than bad! Because when you can make the bad times, good times, then you've REALLY got something. ;o)
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