ON PLANNING

Whooper Swan spoke:

Today, I want to suggest to you that people plan only because everybody else is busy planning and plan for no other reason.

That is a mouthful, as my mama said.

People respond rather forcefully when told by anyone, Oh, me? I do not plan my life. They feel threatened by such a person since they are always planning, a favorite skill, which might be their only skill, actually. 

That is another mouthful, Mama.

Think about it.

Say, I dream of a picnic I once attended and decide I want another picnic experience. I plan one. Right?  Imagine with me for a few moments the steps a picnic planner will likely follow. To us, now, such a way is seen to be a wise exercise. Correct? Takes time, though. Also, an investment of energy.  Also, an investment of personality in the nature of hope for a good picnic that brings about a feeling of being a good planner. Correct?

I want to ask a simple question. Why do people not just live letting life itself bring what will delight them, instead? At the beginning people did it that way because infants had no other way.  So, my second question is: Do we know that an infantile way is not up to our image of a proper standard for an adult? It is certain we abandoned that one.  Correct?  Why? Do any of us remember actually choosing to abandon the infantile way?

One of Sigmund Freud’s early pronouncements was that the infantile way must be abandoned.  He thought that the infant unrealistically assumes that whatever he needs will be delivered as if by magic. Mother taught him that by her motherly ways. Then, did she stop delivering gradually over time? Or, did what was needed from her by the infant alter more or less naturally? And Mother knew that? 

Finally, this I ask, Do we know that a divine power is not in place ready in every moment to deliver our adult needs and we are busy planning only because everybody else is busy planning, and since we know it, we believe nobody will come to my picnic unless I am connected to the world-wide planning machine and that would be disastrous?

From where did this fear of not having friends arise? And why are the best picnics referred to as Happenings? And, was Mother an agent of a divinity that does not abandon us?

Here is another mouthful:  I suggest you do not know but that if everyone of your plans should fail, it will not be the finest of all possible blessings. 

Ultimately, I say: you are already as happy as you are ever going to be. That is a mouthful and the best reason to cease the practice of planning for you only plan away joy.