Roll With the Changes

Those of you who know me know that I'm a bit of a planner. Understatement of the year nominee. But in the same way that the gang from It's Always Sunny knows that 'technique don't mean shit on the street,' there are certain situations when planning is the last thing you'll need to get by.

Usually this is the point of a post where I launch into some painfully long scenario of when planning is the perfect tool for success, and then a contrasting scenario in which reacting to unforeseen complications is the only way to survive. And if I wanted to fill the page with empty prose, why, I could do that. But let's get philosophical.

It's been hard for me to be able to enter situations without a plan, and this goes across the board. Driving trips, date nights, weekend plans, group vacations, lunch errands, breakfast ingredients, whatever; usually, I'm on the ball. Entering into a situation where I didn't have a plan meant that I didn't have an out. As DeNiro says in Ronin, "I never walk into a place I don't know how to walk out of." And that's how I approached almost every situation. Without an exit strategy, without knowledge of what you're getting yourself into, how can you possibly feel comfortable? I don't know if I just lacked the confidence to be physically, socially, mentally, or emotionally secure in my surroundings, or if planning was something that I knew I could depend on, but for a large chunk of my life, this way of living seemed to pay off. For the most part, people kinda knew they could trust me. I had a friend who offered to describe me in one word, and went with 'dependable.' Needless to say, at that time in my life, I took that as a compliment. What better way to describe someone as dependable, able to be trusted, counted on to always come through, no questions asked, nothing taken for granted, no room for disappointment, no excuses for failure. Right?

Well, as DeNiro says in Heat, 'you know there's a flip side to that coin.' And this is going to bleed into something that I have belabored for years. Is too much of me thought out? And I guess this bridges a lot of different topics. But in general, as a decision on how to live and approach life, is there harm in falling back on winging it, figuring that everything will turn out fine, or is there just an inherent stroke of immaturity in that painting? More and more, I'm learning to take things as they come and as they are. I look to thrive in situations of uneasiness. I look to roll with the punches. And for anyone that's been around me recently, roll with the punches is the closest thing to a life creed that I've adopted. Partly because I get to blast REO and sing 'Roll With the Changes' for my theme song, but also because you really don't have any other options besides to roll with the changes as they come.

If you spend your entire life planning, then how are you going to react when something doesn't go according to plan, when chaos is introduced? If you spend your life jumping from stone to stone, figuring out which ones aren't stable enough to stop on, then how are you ever going to produce a long term outcome of buying a house, starting a family, or saving for retirement? Is the answer, GASP, balance? Well I don't know, probably. But if you feel yourself falling too deep into one lifestyle or the other, consider the consequences, and like Michael Jackson says, 'make that change.'