I feel a need here at the beginning to apologize for being absent from the blogging world for quite some time. I've been fairly busy over the past few weeks, what with beginning a new semester of classes, starting a new job, and making my Valentine's Day plans (which, so far, solely consists of me eating some chicken). But now I'm back and better than ever. And by "better than ever," I mean about the same as I was before.
Several weeks ago I had a conversation with an old friend from high school, and I have been reflecting on part of the discussion since then. We were at a mutual friend's wedding, and we spent some time catching up on each other's lives, since we hadn't seen each other in several years. After a while, my friend asked me, "Well David, what's your five-year plan?" I thought the question was an interesting one, and even though I hear the term "five year plan" thrown around quite a bit, no one had ever asked me what mine might be.
Of course, a five-year plan is the result of a person examining their goals and wants and visualizing what he or she would like life to be like five years in the future. Unfortunately for the conversation, I didn't have much of an answer to offer to the question. I haven't developed a five-year plan, and I never have. I normally operate under the principle of a five-minute plan, and I don't think ahead much farther than that. When I was unable to eloquently answer the question, my friend asked what I see for my future, and I said something about how I hope to finish school next year, and then I'll go somewhere and do something...and that's about all I know for now.
I felt that I was unfairly put on the spot by having to have mapped out my next five years while snacking on the candy bar at this wedding, so I asked my friend what her five-year plan. And, to my chagrin, she had it mapped out. She talked about how she plans to be married in five years, and how she wants to have a certain type of job and live in a certain type of place, and how she has all sorts of other goals that she hopes to achieve.
As my friend was talking about all these plans, the thought that passed through my head was: "It would be silly for me to plan out things like that. Those are all things I have no control over."
You probably think that such a thought is absurd. But it's truly the first thing that came to my mind. Why would I make plans to get married within five years? I have no control over that. Why would I have goals about my professional life? That's out of my hands. Why decide that I want to have achieved certain things when it's not up to me?
I'm a fatalist. A recovering fatalist, I hope. Or at the very least, I'm a fatalist who recognizes that he is a fatalist and identifies himself as such on the Internet for all to see, which is perhaps the first stage of recovery. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that my initial reaction in that conversation at the wedding, no matter how genuine, is flawed.
And this is why, quite frankly, some elements of my life are not where I would like them to be. I've abdicated my responsibility for living my own life and handed it all over to fate or luck or pure chance.
I moved to Ohio about a year and a half ago, and recently I was thinking about how I would characterize each six month period since then. To be honest, much of it hasn't been good. This isn't to mean that good things haven't happened. I've made some great friends, and I've had a lot of good times, and I've been to some Reds games. But I would say that in my first six months, I struggled mightily with loneliness, as I adjusted to living on my own in a city where I knew very few people. My second sixth months were characterized by high levels of busyness and stress as I juggled school, work, and ministry, and spent what seemed to be every night fighting off sleep while working at my desk in the middle of the night. And, after all of that, I see the last six months as the period in which I just stopped caring. I procrastinated more, allowed my apartment to become even more cluttered than usual, ate even more unhealthily than usual (which is saying something!), and spent more time laying on my couch than anything else.
A fatalist can get away with such behavior. If there is nothing you can do to improve your situation in life, why care at all? Chances are, the next six months won't be any better than the previous eighteen.
But why does that have to be the case? It doesn't, of course. And as a new year rolled around, I said to myself (probably out loud...I'm still adjusting to living alone, or maybe I'm just losing my mind), "You know David, this year doesn't have to be defined by something negative. It can be the year you move forward. It could be the year that you grow and develop more than any other year of your life. After all, you're probably the best-looking, most sharply dressed man living in this entire apartment. The story of this year hasn't been told yet, so there's no need to hang your head and act like the end credits are already rolling. So get out there and start making something happen. Oh, and don't forget to pick up a loaf of bread at Kroger today."
So why would I share all of this somewhat personal material here, as well as share how I talk to myself (and I didn't even mention how I sing to myself, wink at myself in the mirror, or write myself letters that I then pay 46 cents to take to the post office and send to mail to myself)? I write all of this because if I struggle with fatalism and general apathy toward life, my guess is that others do as well, and maybe you're in the same boat. If so, my encouragement to you is that you don't be like me, but be more like I hope I'm becoming. Each year, in fact, each day, is an opportunity to move your story forward--not by chance or fate, but by purposeful action on the part of the protagonist, which is you. You're not locked in to a prefabricated script.
Now, I should probably go get that bread. I'll really hear it from myself later on if I don't. And I can be a real jerk to me when I'm angry and without sandwiches.
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