The Function of Plans

Like a dog chasing its own tail, we might look back at our lives wondering whether the tasks or endeavours that we have been so busily engaged in bear any significant meaning.  One goal after another, there is always a never-ending search.  From material attainment to abstract, from physical fulfilment to emotional, from tactile yearning to imaginary.  They might give us a temporary satisfaction every time we achieve our goals but it is always short-lived and unsustainable.  And when our plans do not work, our attempts appear futile and fruitless thus cementing our sense of failure. By perpetually identifying a target to shoot, we also derive a plan to achieve that.  We then hold onto a false sense of security and convince ourselves that the plan will bring us to where we are.

Yet if we do not swim against the tide and go with the flow, we always end up at the right place at the right time with the right people.  It is not to imply that we should pay no effort and forgo all planning, for that will also create chaos and confusion in our world.  But we have to bear in mind that all our plans only allow us to strategise and create structure in this reality.  And it always deviates us from the here and now and brings us to a future moment.  It does not have a function of providing any real security for us and never has.  The real security lies in us trusting our own selves and the universe that everything will turn out to be fine whatever the result is.