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The Anatomy of Plans
The catch with any plan is that it is devised against only what is known to occur. We can’t plan for things that we don’t know may happen, because we don’t know what they are. One cannot plan for all eventualities because one simply cannot imagine all eventualities. All plans therefore carry within them an inherent seed of failure, because not everything is considered. Plans backfire or fail because they are linear, whereas actual life-events are simultaneous and synchronous.
And so men and mice plan, winning some and losing some.
In a Newtonian universe, all plans would work if they would take into consideration all permutations of all relative events. For example, if all data is available, then the path of the flight of a feather that has separated from an Eagle in flight can be calculated and an accurate prediction may be made of where that feather may finally land.
But we live in a Quantum universe, where they tell us things observed are different from things not observed; where perception changes the behavior of things; where spooky actions occur at a distance and god plays dice with the universe.
All plans, moreover, are affected by man’s tendency towards stupidity, arrogance, ignorance, presumptions and prejudice. The most difficult of these to overcome is stupidity, because one doesn’t know the extent of one’s stupidity until he or she does something to toe that line. By then, more often than not, it is too late. In view of all this, it seems safe to say that this universe is against the idea of plans. How does one, then, get around to creating a plan that works?
Perhaps, we are not meant to be sure of anything. Perhaps, we are only meant to be aware of possibilities, not all of them, but only of the existence of possibilities. Perhaps, only by infusing a plan with salts of doubt, by allowing each plan to have enough space to change and evolve, can we arrive at a plan that works. And not only must we allow plans to evolve, but we must allow ourselves to evolve with the plan. This is tricky and this is the ethos of all travel – to move, to change, to evolve, to adapt, to lose inhibitions, to lose boundaries, to become something new.
If you do this, if you allow yourself to be molded by this universe that scoffs at your plans, the universe gives you a gift. A gift of a new plan, a stranger plan, a far more exhilarating plan than you could have ever dreamt of. And this plan is exciting, because you haven’t thought of it for days on length and repeated to yourself in the eye of your mind; it is exciting because it is unplanned.
The Anatomy of Journey Page 8