It is right to have the beginning of a journey, as a journey in itself. The planning, preparation, gathering everything you need. The plan of making a plan for what you are planning to do. Unfortunately not all the planning in the world can stop the world from interfering! This is the folly of planning.
The Folly of Making your Foundation out of Sand.
‘Plan to succeed’ right? Well, plans are all well and good for mental preparation. Though, as we all know, outside of our minds is a whole world and people within it that don’t care (or even know) about our plans. This is where our plan, no matter how well laid seems like building our house on sand. The folly of planning. Thinking ‘I have a plan!’. We realise how weak and breakable our ‘plans’ really are. Like trying to get the waves to stop by holding up our hand. They just come crashing and and we get left with this sense of injustice and frustration.
Follow the Foot Prints in the Sand
On our Journey, we start with a single step. One foot in front of the other. Not looking to far ahead in case we loose our footing. Also not looking down at our toes in case we walk into something. If we see something we have a few steps within which to prepare.
We know our destination, we planned it all out so it is like following footprints we have pre made, so all we need to do is keep walking forwards.
Then, the world laughs at the folly of our plans and the waves rush in and erases our next steps. An agreement falls through. A delay. A technical error (in my case my domain not properly transferring). A person is not ready. A literal hurricane might blow in putting travel on hold. Something. Something of which there is PLENTY out there to get in the way of our ‘plans’.
Wrong Roadmap. Different Town.
Now we are left with a ‘set plan’ with which we were to follow to the letter. We set off feeling confident and secure with our plan in hand, knowing that we would arrive safely at our destination.
Now, our next step or two are no longer possible. Or an even a later step has suddenly appeared before us and needs to be dealt with NOW and we are unprepared. Yet before we can do that, we need to sort the step out that was to come before that.
Frantically, we stop in our tracks and look at our ‘plan’, trying to ‘jiggle’ things around to get them back into a straight plan we can follow.
Resistance is Futile
It soon dawns on us that our ‘plan’ is now useless.
As we compare our map to the steps we must take we realise that, like dominos, our steps no longer follow a straight and smooth course. Infact they have all fallen over due to the world coming along and throwing us the curve ball.
Thus, we are left with a useless bit of paper. The wrong road map to a town for what might as well be on a different planet.
In order to move forwards, we must embrace the change. Throw out the map and embrace the chaos. Pull up our sleeves and get stuck into the madness of ‘flying by the seat of our pants’ as we drive forwards. Deep breath and go!
So What is the Lesson Here?
We learnt that planning will not make everything go smoothly. The folly of planning is to think that the world and outer reality will bend and adhere to our plan that exists only in our minds.
The ‘ego’ of expecting the chaos of the world and the many wills within it will still allow for us to smoothly make our way to our destination in a straight and smooth pre-designed course. That everything and thing will part like the read sea to our will.
We need to open our hand in acceptance of the wave, not to stop it.
