John Lennon is usually given credit for saying, Life is what happens while you are making other plans. A long time ago, a Scottish poet, Robert Burns, commented that The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” I suspect that the idea is very old and has been expressed in many languages.
Truth be told, very little goes exactly according to plan. Benjamin Franklin pointed out that when we fail to plan, we are essentially planning to fail. This puts both mice and men between the proverbial rock and a hard place: planning is essential, even if it is not perfect.
Think about the planning that went into the preparations for D-Day or any large-scale military operation. The planning always looks “neat” on paper. What happens on the ground, however, is anything but “neat.” What looks good on paper becomes the Fog of War on the battle field. Most of us never equate our daily lives with the chaos that’s common on the battlefield. In general, that’s a good thing.
We want (and need) our daily lives to be more relaxed and comfortable than typical military operations. On the other hand, if it were not for planning and setting objectives, our lives would become chaotic. We need both goals and flexibility.
When we are too focused on specific goals, we miss many of the daily pleasures life has to offer. When we are too intent on pursuing daily pleasures, we miss the greater satisfaction of of achieving important goals. I am not sure that there’s a magic formula that governs the perfect combination of successful planning and daily flexibility, nor am I sure that the same formula would work for everyone—or even for the same person all the time.
In spite of our similarities, our differences are important. Not everyone, for example, enjoys the same foods or likes the same music. We need both a sense of direction and flexibility. I suspect we also need the ability to shift back and forth between those general objectives as we seek long-term satisfaction.
If we are too focused on goals, we miss opportunities to enjoy the current moment, and if we are too intent on enjoying the present moment, we miss opportunities to achieve important goals. My sense is that we do best when we recognize the dual and conflicting pulls of the present and the future.
As Shakespeare said, the past is prologue. The present moment is the door between the past and the future. We never know for sure what we will get when we open the door between the present and the future. In some ways, we are living the metaphor expressed in the old story about the Lady or the Tiger.
A man is on trial for a capital crime, and as proof of his guilt or innocence, he is placed in an arena with two doors. He is required to choose a door and open it. Behind one door is a beautiful woman who will become his wife, and behind the other is a man-eating tiger. His fate depends on which door he opens. (The story ends when the man opens the door, and we are never told whether he gets the woman or the tiger.)
Unlike the protagonist of the story, we usually have the opportunity to plan for our moments of choice. For the most part, life is not a matter of “pass/fail,” but is more a matter of a “bell curve.” Most choices are a matter of “better or worse” rather than “wonderful” and “terrible.” We have many moments of choice, and—for the most part—our choices are cumulative.
We don’t have to be 100 percent “right” 100 percent of the time. All that’s required is that we make the best choice we can each time we choose. We are also expected to learn how to make better choices as we get older.
This is true not only for us as individuals, but also for humanity as a whole. Our ancestors had to learn almost everything the hard way. We can take advantage of what they learned from their experiences to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” they experienced.