A planners anecdote.
How much of life is spent trying to solve the unsolvable? Define the incomprehensible? Control the outcomes? Refine the perfect blog article? Bless us, somethings we aren’t designed to know;
Tomorrow. Other people thoughts. Why things happen. What might go wrong.
We exhaust ourselves trying to predict the unfigureoutables.
We don’t see life as it is.
We see it as we are - choose you flavor (calm, complete, manic, lacking, chaotic)
To be engaged with life is a commitment to ambiguity. Which can seem rubbish because uncertainty can feel soo uncomfortable.
And so we plan. I’m not trying to make myself redundant. Making meaningful plans is one of life’s joys.
The sense of agency is all we ever need, direction, clarity, even peace.
But perhaps its greatest value is not the future it promises, but the presence it creates now. A life lived on your own terms for your own reasons.
If a plan brings ease or even excited elation to this moment, then maybe it has already served its purpose.
There’s an old proverb:
We make plans and God laughs.
A humble, mimicking reminder that our perceived control over life is often far smaller than we imagine.
And yet we spend so much or maybe ALL of our energy trying to grip the unknowable.
Trying to mentally rehearse every possible future before it arrives.
But life can only ever happen here.
You can never actually be in tomorrow.
Ever.
You can prepare for it, care for it, move thoughtfully toward it…
But your life is always taking place now.
And perhaps that changes things, forcing us to attend just here.
You can feel grateful today for the version of you that prepared well yesterday.
The meals batch cooked. The early (ish) night.
The money saved. The clean, almost ironed clothes.
The difficult conversation was handled with care.
What if the plan was to bring more love, presence, and joy into whatever each moment presents?
Human beings have an extraordinary ability to respond in real time.
To care for life perfectly AS it unfolds (not before).
That, to me, is true responsibility.
Trusting yourself right now, that what you know here is enough, and you will never be as able as you are today.
Because so much suffering comes not from life itself…
But from trying to mentally live somewhere we’ve never actually been.
There is freedom in presence.
Freedom in allowing life to remain partially unknown.
Freedom in recognising that uncertainty is not a flaw in the system —
it is part of being alive.
Life does not pause to explain itself.
It moves.
Through us. Around us. Beyond us.
And our role is not to perfectly control the dance…
but to become one of the dancing flames of life.
Not by controlling what happens,
but by choosing the light we give.
Do the thing that feeds you.
Book the trip.
Create the art.
Tell people you love them (lots of this).
Come aflame, my dear.
Bring your warmth into the world while you’re here.
That is enough.
