The Scotland countryside on a perfectly grey day. I plan to go back. Soon.
Twelve years ago my friend Peggy read the excerpt below (found in Time and the Art of Living, by Robert Grudin) in a magazine, then cut it out. She said it reminded her of me (I'm a planner), and that it made such an impact on her she wanted to keep it. Possibly forever. ;-)
Peggy reports, all these years later, she learned from watching me that planning can make you free. It's one of the five basic tools I prescribe for happiness: have something to look forward to. Needless to say, whether I actually do them or not, I plan lots of things to look forward to. Peg has kept the clipping in the front of her planner all these years.
During our conversation this evening about life and love, pain and heartache, the pursuit of happiness, the gift serving someone daily can be, and how difficult it is to stay focused on creating a meaningful life when you are hurting (for whatever reason), Peggy remembered this clipping and read it again to me.
“We alternately envy, praise and despise those people who plan ahead, who keep precise calendars of when they will be where, seeing whom and doing what. Yet in all these posturings, we tend to ignore a benefit of their behavior that is at once the simplest and the most spiritual: They can escape despair. They have cast towlines out to the future and can, when necessary, drag themselves through a becalmed or stormy present. And they have peopled the wilderness of things to come with images of themselves in action or relaxation.
People suspect that planning will shackle them, but this is almost never the case. If you make plans, you may always diverge from them, committing what is itself a pleasant act of freedom. If you do not make plans, you leave the future an empty field of change, forfeit to your own unpredictable moods. And you imply to yourself that the other two dimensions of time, past and present, mean less to you than they might or should.”
Enough said.
Make some plans. And give yourself something to look forward to.
With love from me to you. : )
Beautifully said! I love making plans--travel plans, that is. :) What I love about my husband working for Delta is that I don't have to wait very long to fulfill dreams of travel. I have discovered that I LOVE to travel (not necessarily the flights, but even those can be ok with a good movie selection in business elite class--which sometimes I can get for free). I love to plan trips even a year in advance! I have been able to fulfill my dreams of going to Italy (which I must return to), London (ditto), Paris and Amsterdam, oh, and Hawaii. It's so much fun to be able to plan something and know it's possible to do. I want to visit Prince Edward Island--that's my plan for next summer. Oh, and a church history tour. :)
ReplyDeleteP.S. Even if plans fall through--such as was the case when Joan and I tried to go back to London and also to Ireland last spring and then the volcano blew up--you can make other plans and have just as much fun. We went on a cruise instead and Lynn was able to join us--I swam with a dolphin! :)
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