All plans of mice and men
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that plans are OK, but the moment we become attached to them working as we expected, the plan owns us.
When a plan owns us, when our expectations are entangled with the plan unfolding as we want it, then we will be disappointed if that does not happen.
This pattern is similar to an addictive pattern, when a ‘something’ has more power over us than we have over it.
Our personal sovereignty, our ability for the essential truth of being to be the decision maker, is a life’s work. So often we have no idea that we are under the spell of a cultural story.
2020 has been a year where best-laid plans have been uprooted at every turn. It has forced so many to learn to live with what is, to be present. It has asked us to unpack assumptions about cultural stories. It has shown us, for those willing to see, the hypocrisy of political power. The care-less-about-everyone-else of many baby boomers, those who are lucky to ‘have.’
Like a storm, it has upended lives.
The storm is far from done. We can choose to learn the lesson, or remain deep in a selfish stance under an illusion that if you only take care of self, all will be well.
Photo taken October 2014