If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail…
Not in my world.
I don’t believe in planning. It is only for the real world. Once the sun scorches the sky and bleeds into a palette of crimson red and blazing orange, my spirit must break free.
I can’t plan.
I prefer to flow, letting my soul seep like water – always drawn towards the path of least resistance.
Planning. Arranging. Scheduling.
The mere mention of these words sends a cold shiver down my spine. To plan a night of enjoyable entertainment would be like tying myself to a ball and chain, where not even the wind can carry my soul to that comforting, care-free world distant of all my worries.
I do not plan to go to the beach next week. I do not pre-arrange trips to other cities. I only buy tickets to the movies before I walk in the cinema.
I cannot tell you what I expect to do next weekend.
I cannot tell you what I expect to do tonight.
I cannot tell you what I expect to do five minutes from now.
If I did, it would be blasphemy.
I escape at night so that I can loosen the noose, my friends, not tighten it.
You see, when I am in this world, I just go with what I feel. I ride my emotions like tsunami waves. I use all five senses to create a sixth sense – to float.
Sure planning does have its moments in life – buying a car, choosing your classes fall semester, marriage and raising a family. However, as Oscar Wilde so brilliantly put it “I try not to worry too much about the future; it tends to come soon enough”.
Spontaneity. Impulse. Instinct.
These are words I live by and breathe through. They are what add spice to my life. They revive me from this world’s trivial mundane routines and procedures that drain me from energy and creativity. Without them I cannot truly be.
Expect me to call you at 10 p.m. and ask you if you’d like to journey with me to Abu Dhabi.
Do not be taken aback when at 5 a.m. I go for a walk on the beach.
Do not be surprised when I decide to stay home and sleep to dream.
Wait for the days when I go dancing to the “musical oil paintings” of Café del Mar and The Doors until the rays of sunlight shatter the morning sky.
Friends, I am an overjoyed prisoner of this blissful world and when in its clutches, a slave to my heart and emotions.
Never will I regret this and never have you truly lived until you have experienced it.
“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”
- Agnes de Mille
Of course the irony of this – about 6 years after I wrote this piece – is that I become a Strategic Planner…