Not Making Plans

Don't get me wrong, I love organization, or at least having a structure to follow.

One of the first things you learn in behaviour management is that firm boundaries make kids (and adults) feel safe.

Even now, the current 20-somethings are throwing a wrench in the way American life has been organized for the last century or so: school, work, promotion, marriage, kids, pretty much in that order, before you're 30.

The term extended adolescence was coined for the grand children and great grandchildren of the baby boomers who are delaying marriage and procreation for PhDs and trips around the world, studying abroad or gap years at a yoga center in India or Costa Rica. "When are you going to settle down?" is probably the question grandparents and parents ask whilst we roll our eyes.

Even our government is beginning to take seriously the need to revise the laws regarding civil partnerships, common law marriages and parent/partner rights.

Yet despite all this apparent "throwing tradition to the wind", all I have heard about recently is X-year plans: "By the time I'm 30, I'll be a partner at the firm," "In 3 years I'll be a fellow at Oxford", "In 2 years I'll be married and working my way up the property ladder..." etc.

Maybe I'm just really thick, but nothing that I've ever planned that way has worked... and I'm glad.

October 2005, I got told we wouldn't be getting engaged.

May 2007 I got told I was being made redundant.

June 2007 I got a job offer in London. I moved away and now I sort of run my department and get to travel throughout the world.

People like to ask me when I'm getting married, well, I've never been asked.

People like to ask me if I'll stay in England forever--I take things a year at a time... forever is a long time.

It seems like people are obsessed with acquiring: houses, 401ks, insurance, stocks, husbands, children... all good things, don't get me wrong, bu I want good stories even if I don't have amazing stuff.

The more I live the more I like to linger--over a cup of coffee, over a painting, in thought, on a run.

The more I live, I seem to get slower, but deeper.

And freer.

The more I wander, the more I feel safe, the more I see the kindness, the goodness in most people. I feel ok laughing at myself, chuckling with the ladies I met at the pub or the gentleman at the cafe.

I want to be able to go at a moment's notice--I want to be able to stay if I want to.

I want to downsize, not upgrade.

I'm not afraid:

Of inflation or taxes or not having the latest clothes or being able to watch the latest movies.

Of not having completed my degree or dog-earring my books.

Of having a run in my stockings or frizzy hair.

Of hostels or camping or traveling by myself.

Of being ignored.

Of not having the same life as my peers or contemporaries.

I want truth--reality. I want to help others who really need it. I want to love those who feel unloved. I want to bring out the best in people.

I want my life to matter, recognizing that the popular way is not the only way to make it matter.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that if I man didn't have something worth dying for, he wasn't fit to live.

I see so many people building shrines and legacies to money, comfort, power and status--but what would they die for? A good reputation? Amazing credit? A promotion? Unlimited funds?

When stated, those things seem small.

Even Solomon, who supposedly had everything, asked for wisdom and spent his life in study.

I'm reminded of the poem "Ozymandias" by Shelley, and "Ode to a Grecian Urn" by Keats--the teacher in Ecclesiastes reminding us that everything is like chasing after the wind, and maybe that's all we're really in it for anyway--the chase.

But I say no.

The world is not only open to those with money. I will not just chase money and men and pleasure my whole life, but as William Blake once wrote:

"To see a world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour."