Plans are my thing.  I make them.  I stick to them. I like them.  They [generally] like me (continue reading for clarification). The thing about plans, though, is that they work until they don't.  Often I've expressed my dissatisfaction with broken plans and equally often the response from others is a euphemistic "best laid plans...", though nobody seems to finish that sentence.

Turns out the saying actually comes from the poem "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough" written by Robert Burns in 1785.  Allegedly the poem was written after Burns found a nest full of mice during winter, who had been displaced despite their well laid plan and well-created nest.  A nest that was ultimately ruined by a farmer's plow.

The poem actually says, "but little Mouse, you are not alone,/ In proving foresight may be vain:/ The best laid schemes of mice and men/ Go often askew,/ And leave us nothing but grief and pain,/ For promised joy!"  Ain't it the truth.  Broken plans (and homes) are by no means a strictly mousey problem.  Burns himself says so.  We humans lay plans and inevitably the plans are for naught.  We are left with monstrous, gaping, question-marks in our lives.  Back at the start, looking around for a solution to a problem when no solution exists.  At that point we humans have a choice to make that cannot be made by mice.

The first option is to start panicking and not stop until we're back on track with our plan.  The good thing about that option is we end up back where we hoped to be.  The bad thing is that, in the mean time, we completely lose touch with our world, so consumed with getting where we want to be that we don't enjoy the process of getting there.  The second option is to relax. When we relax, we actually allow ourselves more opportunities.  By this I mean that when we lose the plans we gain experiences that we could never have imagined for ourselves, and almost always, we learn from and grow from these unplanned experiences.  These unplanned experiences can be the ones that are most foundational to our ultimate destination.

Remember, while you and mice have your plans in common, you are not mouse. When your plans fall to pieces, you have a choice.  Make it.

Keep on thinking,
Josie