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Making plans is good, but life is what you make it
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Making plans is good because it means there is focus in our life. (Shutterstock/*)
One day I had a conversation about life with two young friends of mine. They were in their mid 20s and full of energy.
I loved hearing about how they were dealing with the same things I dealt with when I was their age. We each talked about how we had planned our life, including our career, love life, financial plans, ambitions etc.
Making plans is good because it means there is focus in our life. However, no matter how eager we are in planning our life, there are, unfortunately, things that we just cannot control.
Young people tend to make plans to study, score an ideal job or even get married by a certain age. Little do they know, the last one is something that is hard to plan for.
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When I was young, I didn't set a target to get married by a certain age as I found the idea quite suffocating. What if I didn't meet a guy at that age? Would I get married just because I had planned it?
Planning to get married by a certain age when I didn't even have a boyfriend seemed too scary to me. I thought it would cause unnecessary stress in my life. Or, on the contrary, what if I met a guy way earlier before my set marriage date?
And not only that, when you are set on getting married or settling down with someone at a certain age, supposedly you pass that age and people start asking questions. Family gatherings on holidays from then on seem very hard to attend as you would have to answer that question again.
Nowadays, one is not only defined by marital status; unlike a century ago. Thus, making plans for your future, which include other people’s feelings, can be quite tricky.
When your plans fail to materialize, what happens? Perhaps you become stressed out, or worse, frustrated.
(Read also: My daughter and I are not BFFs – and don't want to be)
And all the fuss, for what? Enjoy your life instead. Go out see the world, work hard and prove yourself.
It might seem strange that I write this while I got married young myself, at the age of 23. Almost 20 years later I am still happily married although I didn’t plan it at all. Falling in love just happened to me. And when you know, you know if he/she is the one for you.
Then I remember my own quote:
"Planning your life into details and sticking to your plan doesn’t always work. Things in life do not go smoothly, and exactly as you plan. There are chances to take, risks to avoid, challenges to pursue and disappointments to deal with. Life is what you make it. Carpe Diem."
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Lorraine Riva is a multilingual working mom in marketing communication field, self-taught photographer, foodie, art lover, Francophil and history nerd, living with husband and a teen daughter in a tiny place called Huissen in The Netherlands nearby German border.
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