2024: the year my plans went wildly and wonderfully astray!
An invitation to stop projecting into next year, to sit with the miracle and mess that was this year, and let yourself know that, whatever happens, the world will keep on turning.
If there’s one thing a cancer diagnosis teaches you it’s that your plans can all go up in smoke with the uttering of three little words in a sterile consulting room. So - twenty-eight years on - you’d think I’d know better than to try and plan my future. Or even my day.
When I started planning my blog post this week (yes, I see the irony) I was hoping to post a simple review of the year. The highs and lows, good decisions & bad decisions, bouquets and brickbats - you know the sort of thing. I had it all scribbled out, but I just wasn’t feeling it.
So I started again. This time I was going to use the seasonal theme of ‘Nine Lessons and Carols’ - the beautiful service from Kings that so many tune into on Christmas Eve - but no, it felt too contrived and, well, planned.
This being the last post of the year I was keen to plan ahead (do you see where this is going?) to free myself up to relax into Christmas. So this morning, as I woke up, and realised that I still hadn’t got an outline blog post, I was starting to feel the pressure.
Of course, it’s a self-imposed, meaningless pressure. It doesn’t matter one bit if I come up with something wise or witty to kiss goodbye to 2024.
But we all do it, don’t we?
We all make plans that won’t matter in the grand scheme of things - and treat them as though they really do.
(I wonder how many planning meetings those starlings had in order to come up with that mesmerising display?)
As I pondered my writing block, trying to work out what I really wanted to say about the year, I realised that life has been trying to teach me something about planning.
And no, this isn’t a blog post in praise of meticulously planning the year ahead. It’s an invitation to let your life unfold as it’s meant to, gently and mindfully, day by day, week by week, month by month. An exhortation to bring all of yourself and your consciousness into the planning process. And a plea to leave a little space for serendipity to creep in.
Which is more difficult than it looks.
It all started with a dastardly coaching question: “What if life has far bigger ideas for you than you do?”