Leaving space in the plan

By all means, plan the dive. But you can’t necessarily plan to win the competition. (State Library of New South Wales)

I record a lot of voice memos. Thinking out loud really helps me, even when I don’t have anyone listening but my future self.

Many of these voice memos, I never listen to again. But I came across one from a few years ago in which I was trying to navigate a major life change.

My husband had decided that he wanted to do a two-year apprenticeship in wooden boat-building. I was immediately supportive. However, the apprenticeship was in Maine, and we were in Atlanta. I had two schools in Atlanta, one of which I was running at the time.

We had to find a place to live in Maine and still manage our house in Atlanta. In addition to these logistics, I had to work out how my students were going to get what they needed.

I figured I’d go back and forth between locations every few weeks, but I didn’t know how sustainable that would be.

As it turned out, it didn’t need to be sustainable. Six months later a global pandemic hit and both of my schools went online. It didn’t matter where I was, but I was going to be trapped in Maine for a long, long time.

I would rather have had the inconvenience of frequent travel than the misery of what actually happened, but I’m sure glad I didn’t waste too much time creating a detailed plan.

And I’m glad we didn’t say no to the apprenticeship.

Plans are helpful. But we don’t have control over every aspect of what happens to us. So any plan we make can only go so far anyway.

If we leave space for things to go wrong, we will have space for problem-solving.

On the other hand, in leaving space, we might also find that things happen more easily than we had thought. Circumstances change and open up new possibilities.

And sometimes, we end up dealing with different problems than the ones we thought we were going to be dealing with.

I believe that we don’t always have to solve the “how” at the beginning. As we go forward, the “how” will come. We still have to do the work to implement the solution we come up with, but we won’t have to force it.

It’s funny to listen back to my voice on that recording from August 2019. I was talking about furniture and plane flights and finances. I had no inkling that our lives were about to change more dramatically than I ever could have imagined.

That makes me wonder about the things I’m going through now. Which of the plans I’m making will be torn to shreds or rendered completely unnecessary? Which of the things I’m worried about will be resolved easily and neatly without my intervention?

I had been concerned about jury duty. What would I do if I were completely unable to work for two weeks? How would I make it? But when I arrived for jury selection, I learned that the the trial was now only going to be for three days.

And in a cinematic turn, I had already been told about this particular case by a friend. I was the first juror dismissed. Two weeks became two hours.

I do make plans, but I don’t stress over the how. I consider the variables I can control and let go of the rest. I project into the near future in some detail, but I let it stay a bit murky farther out. It will all be revealed before long. In the meantime, I’ll expect surprises.

Have you ever proceeded with something even if you weren’t sure how you were going to do it? And is there something you’d be willing to try now, even if you weren’t sure how it was going to turn out?