Backup Plans

I have been learning to live with as much flexibility as possible. I have been learning to accept the unpredictability of life, and human behaviour. I have been learning to have back up plans. It has not been easy, but, it has been deeply rewarding even though I haven’t, and probably never will, fully master it.

Oftentimes we confront the unpredictability, of circumstances and people, with the rage of our disappointed expectations. We project our rage against the offender, who ought to have facilitated the world we wish existed.

Let me give you a rudimentary example. A person visits a toilet in desperation, quickly sits down, and evacuates their bowels with relief, only to find that there is no toilet roll. They are stuck, they are embarrassed, and they start internally dispersing the shittiness of their feelings within this predicament. This person easily starts to dwell on, the now-defunct fantasy, of all that should have been the case, the world that should exist, and what people ought to do.

Imagine, however, if that person was a person with a backup plan. They always liked to have tissue paper in their bag or pocket, and that in the same circumstance would have been able to rely on their backup…and still get to enjoy the fact that there was a toilet at all, and they still got to enjoy their relief. They would have left that toilet, still maybe having preferred that there had been toilet roll…and they might then have suggested to a member of staff that they need to attend to the toilet-roll-situation. They would have been more likely to communicate this in a much more affable manner, than the person who has a partially wet ass, and bruised ego.

The world will always, at some time or other, run against the grain of our ego. The world will always, at some time or other, go against the grain of our will.

How do we face up to it? Do we?

It seems to me, that we more commonly resist this kind of engagement with life, and instead continue to live in a world-of-unpredictable-humans, heavily armed and weighed down with expectations, with no backup plan. We instead chose to live in the abstract world of our rights to this or that, and the shoulds about the circumstances that we would have preferred, and the oughts about the ways we wished others behaved.

We sit there innocently with shit on our arses, blaming the world around us for not being better than it is. And, we can sit their as long as we want, but, sooner or later you’ve got to deal with it, unless an aid organisation hears of your plight and starts delivering you food parcels…and maybe some toilet roll.

And, as a famous rabbi once said…yada yada yada