…Perfect Plans Cannot Be Made
8/3/2010. 11:10 PM
Today I realized pastimes cease to be enjoyable when confined to a plan. The best plans tend to be the ones that are not made.
I set out this summer to reclaim my love of literature by reading one book per week this entire summer. Well I can say that by the standard set by my original plans, that I have failed big time. (i.e. that four week stretch I spent reading Walden, which I have still yet to finish). Oy vey.
However my new standards have allowed me a much sweeter victory filled with unexpected lessons, excursions to new places, and fellowship with great people. The problem with making unforgiving plans is they get in the way of the beautifully unexpected happenings of life, and plans are prone to the things you can’t control like being too tired from an 8-10 hour day at work to read Les Miserables. (And may I interject here that trying to properly read Les Miserables in a week is like trying to properly read the entire Bible in a day. It just won’t happen outside of divine intervention.)
One of my favorite song lines goes: “Perfect plans cannot be made.”
Perfect plans are drafted among the spontaneous. Some of my favorite days of my life have been ones rooted in exploration. Days when I go out to simply see what I can see. It is on those days that I am most aware of the little beauties of life, like the rolling clouds, the smell of fresh cut grass, the sound of the creek.
So tomorrow I plan to _____
August 4, 2010 at 7:32 pm
[...] This post on a blog I subscribe to seemed the perfect balance for my earlier post today about living your life on purpose. [...]
August 5, 2010 at 2:01 am
Thanks for tagging my post! Yes, I do tend to be more concise in all of my writing, which can be a blessing and a curse (curse when I have to make a certain word count for an article assignment, ha). I tend to think people will remember short little phrases that pack a memorable punch.
Love your blog by the way!
August 9, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Ciara,
In regard to reading, I have found that there are two valid approaches to it. The first is reading for distance. This is like your vow to finish a book per week. You read hard and fast to cover as much ground as you can quickly. The other approach is to read for depth. A depth reader doesn’t care about how many pages are read, but rather is focused on going deeper in the text and taking whatever amount of time is required to mine the riches of meaning, application, and beauty from it.
The two approaches are mutually exclusive. You have to pick one or the other. Thankfully, there is a time and a place for each. We just need to have the discernment to know which is which. Not every book was intended to be a “page turner.” Walden is a depth book. If you blow through it quickly, you have violated every principle that Thoreau was trying to impart. But if you read it slowly and contemplatively, you’ll find that your soul enters into the peace and stillness that opens your ears to hear the voice of God.
So cast off any guilt or disappointment about “failing” to achieve your goal and embrace the differences in book types and reading approaches!