Headache is back again today. Today’s reason must be oversleeping last night, out of the gazillion reasons to get this frequent unwelcome visitor. Anyways, the topic was about feasibility of planning, not headache!
The other day, my friend Sastry, on an unrelated topic, mentioned that philosophically speaking, we all live in the present only. This is interesting! Usually, the slogan these days over social media is that people should live in the present, not be concerned of past since nothing can be done to alter it, nor live in the future either, for that is not in control now. So one could exercise control, and enjoy, present only. But Sastry’s, quotation is something different. One cannot live in anything at all that is not present. I like it!
Extending this concept it appears, there is no point in planning, if we are living moment to moment in present. It is too often observed, the day never goes as planned or intended. For example, the plan for that day, every day for past few days, has been to work and progress on some income tax work. But each day there were priorities higher, and demanding immediate attention for tasks that came up, not forecast. Energy and time had to be diverted to things other than the planned income tax work. These were a result of real and ‘conscious’ decisions. It just so happened, that external environment brought about something that couldn’t be forecast, nor be shoved to a lower priority. This is not a result of bad planning or accepting things that were not on the to do list for the day. It was kinda, inevitable!
One has to appreciate the fact that it is better to live optimally for what makes most sense, whether that was according to plan or not. That being what it is, why plan at all, and feel bad that nothing is going per plan? And that the to-do items are not getting checked out? At the end of the day, if a person makes the most of the resources available including time and energy. how does it matter if the executed task fell within the plan or not?
The fact of the matter is, this world is an ‘extremely’ interdependent, and heavily networked, way beyond people usually understand. Action at one part of the world would have ripple effects all over. It was amazing when I realized back then that on what day I would celebrate my 60th birthday actually turned out to be dependent on someone in US a colleague of my son going on vacation which itself was dependent on that person’s friend or relative activity, because that would affect my son’s availability, and therefore the date for my event!!
Someone experiencing a scenario and causing an action, cannot humanly contemplate which action in the world influenced his own action eventually.
Every so-called action is actually a reaction to something. If someone lost his umbrella in a heavy thunderstorm, (1) the cause was the thunderstorm caused by a multitude of human inflicted, as well as natural climatic reasons, and (2) of his idea to carry an umbrella on that day. Him possessing an umbrella in the first place, was a result of someone producing it, someone selling it, someone inventing it because that person got an idea from seeing something, and so on. Where does one stop, and call something as an ‘action’? Every action is actually a reaction. Perhaps there has never been an action to start with, as silly as it may sound!
That being the situation, why bother plan anything? Isn’t it adequate if we are able to make the most out of what is currently possible, at the moment, for the moment, and thence for the day? Why bother that the income tax work of the client or of my expired dad isn’t progressing? It will get done someday, Hopefully! And if it doesn’t, as long as I am doing the right things every moment ….. ‘every moment’ of the day , am I not already being the most productive?
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