Making Plans

Making plans can be lots of fun. Making plans can make you feel organized, on top of things, and, if you're planning a vacation or special night out, can make you feel a happy sense of anticipation. Even when you're making plans for something not quite fun, taking care of business can feel so productive.

The hitch, to quote Robert Burns is that 'The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley,' or, to put it simply, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. John Lennon used the following quote in the song Beautiful Boy, 'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.' All of this certainly rings true for those of us who experience chronic pain, whether that pain be physical or emotional. No one starts a day thinking, 'Hmmm, well the day looks good but I'd like to add a little pain to my itinerary.' Yet, sometimes that's what happens.

So what about those great plans that are now disrupted and either tabled or abandoned? Well, it's not so much the plans that count as how we respond to where we are. Obviously the plan has changed & our challenge is to roll with it. Resisting, fighting, regretting are not so productive. These things keep us spinning our wheels. Leaning into the new plan is a much more positive approach. That doesn't mean we necessarily embrace the new plan wholeheartedly. Perhaps when we lean in our weight will tip the balance just enough to throw the new plan off center and bring it to a place that's a bit more palatable.

Part of any journey is the unexpected, even those journeys that are carefully planned. How fortunate we are that our journey takes place in a great big glorious world. We don't always end up where we expected to be. The joy is in finding the beauty where we are.