Prepare to be Unprepared

I am a planner. I like my world organized, taking time to anticipate and head off problems. I don’t think I overdo the planning thing–though some might disagree 😀. However, I found there is wisdom in preparing to be unprepared. I suspect some of you are impressive preparers—scheduling the course of a vacation to the last detail, positioning place cards for the perfect seating arrangement at a wedding or dinner party, mapping out a 5-year career plan, or deciding how to respond to a future success (or failure) ahead of time.

To your surprise, on your well-planned vacation, your plane reroutes around bad weather, and you miss your first connection, throwing off your oh-so-perfect schedule. Or at your dinner party, one of your guests dislikes your seating arrangement and changes the place cards, putting you in the awkward social position of either changing the cards back or accepting, with a bit of resentment, this breach of etiquette. What happens when you find yourself walking out of your boss’s office in shock because your 5-year career path didn’t include the company making bad financial decisions, closing its doors and laying you off? Sometimes instead of the planned success of an endeavor, you get the opposite, i.e. a movie star, certain of an Oscar win, must tuck his acceptance speech back into his pocket and pretend to be happy for the other guy. This happened to me in reverse when I planned NOT to win the Author U award for best manuscript for my book, Tales from Weaver Pond. When my name was called, I stayed in my chair for a few minutes. Then I heard my name again, and while walking up to receive my award, I was sad because I’d already planned ahead for losing and couldn’t quickly get my emotions around winning. Really?

With age, and hopefully some wisdom, I came to appreciate the idea of being prepared to be unprepared. Though not an extreme planner, I still find comfort and security in knowing where I’m going to be, what I’ll be doing, and how I’ll be doing it. This tends to reduce my apprehension. In the past, when my plans went awry, it elevated by 2x any anxiety I may have had by not planning. Since the odds of everything always going well are small, this was a breach of logic.

But age has its advantages, and one is that, given enough time, we can figure out what works and what doesn’t work in our lives. I now prepare to be unprepared by keeping realistic expectations. Still somewhat of a planner, I take a philosophical approach by reminding myself that demolished plans often lead to unexpected pleasantries. Recently, on our way from Glenwood Springs back to Denver, my family turned around at Vail Pass, which was closed for bad weather. Instead of getting upset because we tripped back to Glenwood Springs and I missed a meeting, I noted it wasn’t a big deal and I’d experience more time with my granddaughters. That is always a blessing.

Now in each attempt to prepare to be unprepared, I point out, Realistically, these plans may not work out just as I might like. If not, it’s meant to be and something good will come out of the changes. There are always silver linings when life alters my plans, though admittedly some are easier to find than others.