HA!
The saying "The best way to make God laugh is to tell him your plans" now has personal significance to me. In 1785, poet Robert Burns wrote a poem he named "To a mouse". Paraphrased, it says:
The best laid plans of mice and men
Often go awry
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy.
True in 1785, true in 2012, and it will still be true in 2085, assuming the the Mayan Calendar ending next month was just an oversight on their part.
Despite the fact that things don't always go according to plan, planning is still essential. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces on D-Day, recognized that. "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable" he said.
Mike Tyson put it another way: "Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face!"
Ben Franklin noted "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." While that is generally so, no one can deny that Shakespeare had a point when he observed that "Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered." Given a choice, though, I'll take my chances with a boat that IS steered every time.
The late chef Julia Child offered this planning recommendation to would be chefs: "Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need." J.R.R. Tolkien warned that "It will not do to leave a live dragon out of your plans if you live near one." And Yogi Berra observed that "If you don't know where you are going you will end up somewhere else!"
In the song Beautiful Boy, a song written by John Lennon for his son with Yoko Ono, Sean, John included the lyrics "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans." That song was included in his 1980 album Double Fantasy. In retrospect, he might have changed the lyrics to "Life and Death are what happen when you are busy making other plans." John was murdered on December 8, 1980. Though I'm certain it was not the way he planned it, Double Fantasy was his last album.
Ancient philosopher Lao Tzu believed that "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." I'd say Lao had sort of a "hang loose and enjoy your life's journey because it will end soon enough" philosophy.
And as you go on your journey, you might remember one of my favorite prayers, an old Scottish one, that asks the following Divine intervention:
From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties,
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
(And from any nearby dragons too, please!)
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