What’s Next – Day 372

Light on the Path – Photo: L. Weikel

What’s Next

It’s pretty common, I think, for most of us to want to know ‘what’s next.’ And that applies to little things in life as well as some of the bigger ones; from our next meal to our next career move.

My feeling, though, is that far too many people spend so much time planning for the future that they miss out on much of the magic of the present. For instance, it’s not uncommon for many people to start planning their ‘next’ vacation before they’ve even concluded their current one.

It’s almost as if we prefer to imagine how our lives could be than actually live them.

We are a planning society. From Day-Timers to Google Calendars we’re surrounded by tools that can help us plan what’s next – and when we’ll do it.

Planning, Planning, Planning

I’m not a big fan of planning; at least, not planning down to the littlest detail. While I recognize this can be a source of some irritation for those around me, I’ve found that, for the most part, I’ve developed a fairly sophisticated sense of what truly needs to be planned and what can be improvised or decided on the fly.

Of course, I understand its purpose. Society runs a lot smoother when we have schedules and plans.

And I’m not categorically averse to all planning. I just balk when it feels as though there’s an effort being made to marshal life into predictable outcomes when we actually have no freaking clue as to how things are really going to unfold.

It’s when we try to exercise control over what we simply cannot know (not yet, at least) that I choose not to participate.

I’m Being Vague

I feel like I’m being far more vague than I mean to be in writing this post. It’s as if the idea for it is at the tip of my brain and yet it’s just out of reach.

The germ for this post started the other night when I was out walking after writing my post about the Leonid meteor shower, which was – in my estimation – a dud this year. I was walking to a clearing where I hoped to experience an abundance of shooting stars. In order to get to this clearing, I had to walk through the woods.

Only a Few Feet Ahead of Me

As I made my way along the leaf strewn dirt path through the woods, I held a small light in my hand that I shone downward as surreptitiously as possible. I didn’t want to disturb the other creatures in the forest as I ventured toward my destination. Given that I was keeping the light very low and tight, I was only illuminating about a yard ahead of myself at any given time.

Naturally, this reminded me of the saying that we really only need to have the path illuminated for us one stepping stone at a time. Indeed, as I ruminated on this thought, I came to a point in the path when I was literally hopping from stone to stone.

Trust

The whole point of that saying (or whatever it’s called) is to instill in us the understanding that long-range planning is good as far as setting a course or pointing ourselves in the right direction. But long range planning, ultimately, does little to get us from point A to point B.

In actuality, we need only see ahead of ourselves just enough to take the next step and, in so doing, trust that the next one will appear.

It’s in trusting that our path is unfolding in the present moment that we pull our future toward us and answer the question, ‘What’s next?’ step by step.

And isn’t that the fun of it all?

(T-739)