In the past I’ve done what I can
For the future, just making a scan
I took a chance on a blunder
To re-ignite wonder
Sometimes I still make a plan.
Synopsis: I’m a family practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa. On sabbatical to dance back from the verge of burnout, I’m having adventures and working in out-of-the-way places. Right now I’m living in Amberley, and working the last half of a four-week assignment in Waikari, less than an hour from quake-stricken Christchurch, in New Zealand’s South Island.
Bethany and I taught and participated in a diet/exercise program, Ultimate Bodyshaping Challenge (UBC) for five years. One of its guiding principles, “when you fail to plan you plan to fail,” rings true in a lot of human endeavors.
The opposite slogan, “just do it,” carries the message of spontaneity and adventure.
I have learned that both approaches carry validity. I don’t know if I want to strike a balance or resonate between the two principles.
For years I did an inhuman amount of work, going top speed at peak efficiency sixteen hours a day. I reached that level of productivity by knowing each step of the day before I got out of bed. Such a system gets a lot done but lacks resilience and strains the psyche.
I faced a tradeoff: efficiency vs flexibility. And while life is full of tradeoffs, I had gotten a particular mental set of what life felt like.
In the last year I’ve learned that slowing down 20% did away with half the stress (check my posts from a year ago in Barrow). I also found out that I fail to plan a day and still enjoy it.
Bethany and I, with another physician/teacher couple, Cheryl and Larry, took an excursion via train from Christchurch to Greymouth, on the west coast of the South Island. We arrived with few plans and no expectations. The hotel we’d booked turned out to be 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the railway station. We took a taxi out, dropped our bags, and walked into town on the beach.
I’d never been close to the Tasman Sea before. I hadn’t read anything on the net, I had no expectations. I watched the violent surf crashing a dozen meters from where I stood at the low tide line. Rounded rocks, grey smooth granite and white and pink marble, dotted the light grey sand.
If we plan everything we do, and if everything goes according to plan, the world loses its surprise, and, with it, its wonder. Encountering new things involves risk, but fear and risk don’t keep us stuck in a rut as much the mental set that tells us what life should be.
Yet without a plan I wouldn’t have gotten to the beach.
Where do we find the optimum between planning and spontaneity? If we can’t define an end point, does an optimum exist?
Or does the optimum shift and dance away, depending on our phase of life?
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