Plans Are A Placeholder for Reality
From "Things I've Learned While Hiking"
My life as a hiker has taught me many lessons that apply to everyday life. Here’s one lesson that still comes in handy: Plans are a Placeholder for Reality. What I love about this one is that it affirms good planning and acknowledges that reality can often surprise us.
Reality hits us with unexpected, unforeseen, unavoidable, and uncontrollable things. Yet, despite all of those “Un”- Words, plans are still worth making, even if their reliability is limited. Sometimes plans work out pretty much the way we’d hoped. Other times, we need to adapt them in mid-stride. And once in a while we need to throw them out all together. At least for now.
But even our discarded plans are worth making, because they get us started. They point us in a direction. They help us imagine what we want out of this trip or project. And they make us aware of options, which help us to adapt if conditions change, or things don’t go our way.
I put a lot of energy into planning my hikes. My treks never begin at the trailhead. They begin at my kitchen table where I comb through maps and apps, along with comments and recommendations from others. This gives me some sense of the lay of the land and access to available resources. It helps me pace myself for the long haul, and consider the parts of hiking that don’t include walking. The ones that attend to basic needs of body and soul.
It answers questions like:
How will I get to the trailhead?
Where will I camp each night?
Where are the best sources for drinking water at this time of year?
Which towns provide the best lodging, where can I can shower, do laundry, resupply food or gear, and hang out with cool people?
Is there a post office nearby where I can mail personal items home or bounce them ahead to another trail town a week or two away?
Is medical care available, in case I get sick or injured?
And finally, how will I get home?
Planning is good, because it helps us to become aware of the kinds of options we’ll along the way. But it’s not good to expect that everything will go according to our plans. Reality often disappoints us.
My friend, Jeff says that “Expectations are premeditated resentments.” I’ve lived and hiked long enough to know that his words are true. So despite our best plans, there are always things that are beyond our control, and beyond our ability to predict. So we have to “take what the trail gives us,” which is another nifty saying that I’ll explore some other time.
For now, it’s good enough to say that we need to make thoughtful plans about the things we want to accomplish. And while we’re at it, we can include a plan to change our plans if they suddenly become Un-Realistic. (Yes. Yet another “Un”-Word.)
This means, we need to hold them loosely enough to let them go when Reality Has Other Plans. We need to adjust our expectations and revise our plans to ones more suited to new conditions.
That’s why I say, “Plans are a Placeholder for Reality.” They are always provisional. So changing them is not failing to plan well; it’s succeeding to adapt well. It’s using good judgement to adjust ourselves to how things really are.
Thank God that things don’t always go according to our plans. If everything was under our control, it would sap the excitement and challenge, discovery and sense of achievement from life. The only tests we would ever take would test nothing, and say nothing about what we’ve learned. They would only remind us of things that we think we already know, and excuse us from our responsibility to learn and grow, and deepen our insights, while expanding our vision toward new horizons.
Peace,
Joe