We all have plans.
Plans are good. They give us focus, and they help us figure out what to do next, who to interact with, which classes to take, how to learn, and many other important things. Not knowing what’s next is the main source of anxiety for 20 somethings, so we come up with big plans to tell people when we’re asked, “so what’s next for you?”
Plans are good, but they are not everything.
If we live our lives completely focused on our own plans, then we may miss what is actually coming next. We may not take the job because it doesn’t fit the trajectory we designed. We may not ask that person out because they are not like the people we dated before. We may not move to that city because our dream job doesn’t have a huge population there.
We focus on the future like it is the only thing that we need.
We fill our worlds with activities, meetings, and relationships that fit our own idea of “perfect.” Each move is calculated, whether we recognize it or not. Some of us are more likely to shut down in the face of change. I am one of those people.
I never let myself go outside of my plan. I did the experiments I wanted to, and I took the classes I thought would be better for my career. I filled my days with seminars, meetings, workshops, and experiments that I thought would serve my own future. It didn’t matter that I had become more social, more well-rounded, or more adept at science than ever before. All I wanted was to be the best scientist that could become the best PI.
Then a priest told me something in Confession that really hit me:
“Sometimes we fill our lives with things because we lack gratitude for what is already there.”
Much like everyone else, I had filled my life with my future instead of looking at what I already had. When we try to change our lives to fit our own plans, we lose sight of the beautiful things we already have. Sure, we should all be trying to meet the future, but we should also be willing to adapt to what we receive as a consequence of our actions.
There are amazing things happening in our lives every day. If we only accept what we think we want, then we miss the point of acting in the first place.
Every day we have the opportunity to make our lives better. It may be a small action, like trying a new food, but that action can enhance our lives for the better. There is a caveate to this idea though…
We have to take the time to notice what we have before us.
Allow me to give an example from my lab life. On Holy Thursday, I helped my friend stain numerous mouse brains to image for our PI’s grant. A few days later we went to the microscope room to take the pictures. What with all that had been happening in lab, I was really hoping that we could get a representative picture or two.
The screen was completely black.
“You know who did the primaries?” I looked back at the screeen, “Me. Sorry I screwed up your experiment man.”
“No. Don’t say that,” he said.
I sighed and thought for a moment. Our PI had plans, and we couldn’t just give up now, not when his grant’s due date was coming up. I thought about all we had already done for the project, and I thought about the tissue on the slide. Clearly there were cells there, and we did go through the protocol as we knew how to.
There was something there.
We just needed to wait a moment.
“I know,” I said a second later, “But I think I know how to fix it!”
I turned the exposure up to 8 seconds, which is a really long time to wait for a tissue sample. Regardless, I knew that it would work. We already had brain tissue and fluorescent antibodies. All we needed to do was wait for the light to emit back to the camera.
It worked.
I’ll admit, it is painful to sit and wait. My sophomores tease me for being so impatient in lab sometimes. However, it is all the more necessary to be patient when we are observing what is before us. Whether it be something in lab, or just some situation in our lives, we need to be willing to stop, breathe, and think about what we already have.
We need to be grateful for what we are already doing to make our lives better.
We need to be thankful for the people that we already have in our lives.
We need to recognize how great we already are.
Just because something seems incorrect at the moment does not mean that it is “wrong” for us. Life is hard. That does not mean that we can just throw in the towel and throw away all of our hard work. That does not mean that we have to change everything. The trials and tribulations that come with life give us an opportunity to recognize the strength and ability we have to make things better.
Sometimes that means we wait.
Sometimes that means we take the opportunities that don’t fit our plans exactly.
Nothing will go the way you want it to. Sure, you may get lucky and have a few easy successes, but at the end of the day, there will always be some troubleshooting to do. You will need to learn new things. You will need to get to know people. You will need to adapt.
But that doesn’t mean you aren’t following your plan.
You are just making your plans better.
If you are given the oppotunity to go a little outside your plans this week, take the chance. If you are stressed out about everything you have to do, take the time to notice how much you have already done.
Our plans aren’t perfect.
But they can be perfected.
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