Spontaneity: Why Its Better than Having a Plan

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us” – E.M. Forster

Be born, go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, have grandkids, get old, die. That’s the plan right? Well, so we think. Unfortunately so many get stuck in this cookie cutter idea of what life is supposed to look like, only to live in constant frustration and disappointment that their life looks nothing like the standardized version. Life may drift them more and more off course, and they keep trying to control the helm by bringing it back to the life they think they should have, like the characters on TV.

Unfortunately much of their life is spent in the struggle trying to get back “on course”, or what they believe is “on course.” So much time is wasted in this struggle to no avail. Only when a person just gives up, surrenders to the tides of their life are they able to see that their idea of how things were SUPPOSED to go was causing them a constant frustration because they were never actually enjoying anything about the present moment, or the way things WERE going. Who says things have to go exactly like that? If things aren’t going exactly like the social norm does that means that things have gone “wrong”?

The fun and adventure lies in the spontaneity, in the suspense, in the uncertainty. Of course it’s fun to have goals and aspirations, things that we envision ourselves doing and ways that we can offer our gifts and talents to the world, but in order to become more open to possibilities and opportunities that are awaiting us, ones that we never expected were possible, the most important thing we need to do is stop planning our futures so rigidly.  We must allow ourselves to relinquish the need to have absolute control over every single situation, small or big. We must let something else take over, something that knows way more than we do….

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