Each of us has storms we were born to sail into.
Birth appears to be mine.
I’ll tell you my story, but only if you promise to make it all the way through, to the part where this essay is about you.
Deal?
First, you must know that the most baffling and profound thing happened to me in October of 2012. I met a troop of traveling Buddhist monks. Orange-clad, bald men as tall as my chin who smiled and mumbled to one another like buzzing bees, dancing and wiggling and occasionally erupting in Tibetan laughter. They were in town for a talk and a sit, and when it was time to sit, someone told them. When it was time to tidy up, they did that. When I asked the translator where they were going next, he answered, “wherever we’re supposed to go.”
I thought he was blowing me off, except his eyes twinkled like it was the best joke.
But in talking with their hosts, and the person with whom I once shared an address, it appears the monks actually have no idea. They have no plan. Someone who wrangles them must, but as individuals they don’t know where they will eat, or sleep, or travel from day to day, they just know that the next right thing will show up. Why wouldn’t it? The right thing not happening seems as absurd to them as serendipity seems to me, except that it keeps happening even though I staunchly do not believe in it. Someone at the airport will put them on the right flight. Someone will receive and feed them.
Of course.
At the time, I did not respond kindly to their flagrantly flippant life because I have a PhD in planning, worry, overthinking, and the idea that anything might happen without a multi-tabbed spreadsheet made my eye twitch.
Who are these jolly people who just have faith that everything is unfolding as it should?
And how do I do that, but with spreadsheets?
How do you plan without a plan?!
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