Remember the famed Scottish bard, Robert Burns, seeing a rodent getting its home in the fields cut down, and penning something famous about “the best-laid plans [or “schemes”] of mice and men…?” Going bust? Unfortunately, that’s true in many cases, some of them tragic in nature.
For years now I’ve thought of all the poor people at their World Trade Center offices that seemingly placid morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I’m sure some were making plans for a week-end getaway to Vermont, or maybe even a longer trip to Paris or Madrid. Others might have been thinking of a daughter’s orthodontia appointment, or what the vet needed to do for this or that family pet, or what new restaurant to try on the Upper East Side; or simply about tackling upcoming problems at work that needed resolution. In other words, some of those people were making plans, as we all do so frequently and inveterately.
And then of course look what happened that fateful Sept. day. A bunch of mainly Saudis, evil ones (I won’t besmirch an old religion by calling them the usual “radical Islamists”) lethally slammed planes into those towers. And elsewhere…
Why am I thinking yet again of all this and just as poignantly, if not moreso? Because only a few months back a lot of sweet, familial, laid-back, basically decent Israelis paid an enormous price Oct. 7, 2023 at the hands of other Arab terrorists of the worst variety. Cutting off babies’ heads and the rest, then pleading a BS case to justify this, that and the other (having already shown their sadistic glee via copious “posts”).
Again, I’m sure some of those Israelis were busy planning, too. In fact, they were not only planning, but savoring this or that aspect of their near futures. Now look!
All the dead both then, and from a dangerous operation into Gaza, have simply embittered (for always) what’s left of many now shattered families. How hostages have been treated in Hamas tunnels simply beggars our mostly fat cat imaginations.
Because comparatively speaking, I’m a fat cat, and so are many of those who haven’t experienced such horrors. We, too, plan away, figuring we’re in durably safe circumstances as we do so. And that certainly includes yours truly. I’ve been busy lecturing away here, using these ghastly, comparative examples: but you know what? I’m as bad as anyone in this regard. I, too, scan and interrogate this or that aspect of the future in my inner calendar of sorts.
Easy to lecture, super-difficult to heed those lessons? Once again, that certainly goes for me up the yin yang. All this seems to be a besetting and ubiquitous human tendency, I suppose. The voluminous writer Voltaire once put it simply: “We hope to live.” (“On espère vivre.”) That’s pretty well it in a nutshell.
I know, I know: you expect me perhaps to tell you from some moral mountain top the same thing that many philosophers over the centuries have declared. I.e., that all we have in this life is the present. That the only healthy thing is to live right now, not in the future, never mind in the elapsed past.
Do you think, however, that these noted thinkers reliably followed their own advice? I truly doubt it.
Well, there you are on this very human topic, tendency, and even conundrum. See if you can do better at all this than yours truly, or a slew of noted lucubrators (there’s a word for you!). I’m sure many can…
One last point: we don’t only have hopes regarding our future plans. We also have fears, too – no question. Fears of a whole variety of snafus and problems occurring. Many of which never do occur, making all that worrying about the future a form of wasted time? Perhaps. Some of which, however, DO eventuate, but won’t nearly match in intensity and impact the great tragedies sketched above.
When planning, which yes, we all do, let’s try to remember some of this. Refraining from making it a bad habit of sorts? But on balance, I suppose we’ll stay thoroughly human, despite all the philosophers’ warnings, and plan away anyway!
At least one stays organized that way, and with the kitchen cupboard well-stocked …