I come from a family of planners, those of you who know us well, or are part of the family, either by birth or marriage are either rolling your eyes or snorting at the understatement of the year that I just laid out there for all of you. I come from a family of planners. When we gather, we like to know AHEAD OF TIME, where we are all going to sleep, what we will eat for all of our meals, a general outline of our time together, and the various activities in which we may, or may not participate. Most of us don’t do well when the plan changes at the last minute. It throws us off and makes us irritable until we readjust. Sometimes we can all go with the flow, but having a good overall structure to shore us up really makes us feel better.
Last fall things did not go according to plan and my father spent months in the hospital and in recovery from a serious illness. We learned, in this in between time, to roll together through the ups and big downs that came our way. People brought us food, and we helped each other through the time, with our lists, and the shared memory of what a plan looked like, but mostly relying on each other to take turns remembering the details of daily life that needed to be taken care of until the crisis passed.
Maybe it’s because we are so used to planning together that we were able to move into a looser form of sharing our common life, maybe it was the crisis, and our deep, deep love for one another that helped us get through, and maybe it’s because we didn’t know when we woke up each morning what the day would bring, but we were mostly able to let go of the big plan and go with whatever each day brought us.
Now that I am out of crisis mode, my planning gene is kicking back in. As I move into a phase of my life with more external demands on my time, after a phase when my plan was to have no plan for my day to day life, I am falling back into my need for more structured time. I need to know what I am doing for the week, which office will I be in, where is my computer, and where are my yoga clothes, when will I have lunch with so and so, how will I get to work, walk or take the car? What will my sweet husband and I have for meals, where did I leave the milk? Some of the plan is filled in, the rest is by the seat of my pants.
Just as I am getting into what might loosely be called a routine, and I have managed to figure out how to plan my new life: we have entered into a stormy Colorado spring. My best laid plans are often tossed out the window. I have had three days derailed by snow. The first one, I had company, and we made the best of it, and ended up forging ahead with the master plan of the day, the second snow day I spent languishing, unmoored, on the couch mostly. The third snow day, I let go of the meetings, the lunch date and my class, and made a new plan: soup and grilled cheese with my sweetie, and whatever else we got done.
Maybe this is spiritual growth, and I am learning to live more deeply into “being present”, and perhaps I am just getting more nimble with my ability to plan, either way, I am learning to lean more into the now, and less into the “what if”?
Caravans and Cairns 