The Arrogance Of Planning The Future

NOTE: This is the prompt for a submission from TheCreative.Cafe

I cannot say where things will go in the future. For now, I choose discomfort over comfort. Time over money. Freedom over security. Flexibility over luxury. Creativity over certainty. It is scary at times, always worthwhile. – Rosie Leizrowice

My Submission to TheCreative.cafe:

The Arrogance Of Planning The Future

My future is unknown. Isn’t everyone’s? We are challenged by our parents to have a Plan. But our parents sometimes choose, perhaps unwittingly, to deceive us because they fail to mention the second part of that sage advice. Why don’t they flesh it out with the reality? Something like, “Remember, my precious child, as you venture out on your own, always have a Plan. Oh, and by the way, nothing ever goes as planned. Goodbye and good luck!”. Wouldn’t that have been a little more helpful? Is this a deliberate act of resentment on their part? Is it intentional to basically say sink or swim? Or is it their sincere idea of a teaching moment? Regardless, it’s a true and fair statement. Yes, have a Plan. But be assured that it will never come to fruition. It all goes awry. Because we make choices. Every single day. And some will be good choices and some won’t. But inevitably it will affect the Plan. Because we don’t know the future. We’ve never had that ability. We can attempt to guide the future in our desired direction but we’re a bit naive about that, don’t you think? Our future is never in our control simply because it hasn’t happened yet.

Maybe the future turns out better than we planned. Probably not. Maybe we’ll be able to adopt and adapt to a new revised Plan as our lives evolve. I suppose that depends somewhat on whether one is an optimist or a pessimist. Maybe we convince ourselves that this was our Plan all along. Or maybe we’re resentful because we did everything right but it just didn’t turn out the way we planned.

So could it be argued that there is no need to have a Plan? Just make our choices as they come to us intuitively? I suspect it’ll all end up fairly similar either way. It actually could be considered rather arrogant to have a Plan. We don’t know what our future will be. We just don’t. By virtue of pure logic, we do not know anything at all about the very next minute and every minute forward. Believe it; accept it; maybe even understand it.

In any present moment, we do have a future. We just don’t know what it is or how much we have left. And we never will.

So just live this moment. That’s a perfectly good Plan.