Prepa­ra­tion and the Illu­sion of Control

“It’s a tough job, but some­one has to do it!”

The idea for today’s arti­cle arose at break­fast. Our friends Debashis and Adri­enne were over, and Dar­bella and Debashis were dis­cussing get­ting ready to go back to school. I men­tioned in pass­ing that I was a few days late writ­ing this arti­cle and asked for top­ics. Debashis came up with “Get­ting Ready,” and men­tioned how easy it was to get quite “lost in preparation.”

This comes up a lot, for clients. It seems to me to be a bit ‘twisty-turny’ so let me toss out some usages.

The Doom and Gloom Scenario

One of the stan­dard argu­ments against being present is, “But if I only focus on today, I might not have enough money when I retire,” or some vari­ant thereof. It’s as if the per­son is say­ing that they must focus, end­lessly, on some future point in time, and on all of the details to get there, or things will fall apart.

It doesn’t seem to reg­is­ter that such plan­ning, in the past, has typ­i­cally not worked out as they thought, here in the present. Most have much, in the present, to com­plain about–their rela­tion­ship isn’t work­ing out, work isn’t work­ing, mom and dad are still behav­ing like mom and dad, and on and on. If we could peer into the past, we’d see that, say a year ago, they were plan­ning and think­ing and decid­ing, and none of it led to where they thought they were heading.

A client and I were hav­ing cof­fee. At a prior ses­sion, we’d talked money and bud­gets. She said, “After our last ses­sion, I real­ized that I’d cre­ated bud­gets, and thought that was it. I now real­ize that we’d break the bud­get reg­u­larly, by jus­ti­fy­ing pur­chases in the moment.” In other words, the bud­get was done as a thing in itself. “Look, we have a bud­get!” but the day-to-day appli­ca­tion of the plan­ning was chaotic.

The “You Go First” Model

Many clients have said, “Yes, I want a deep and mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship, and I want to use the com­mu­ni­ca­tion model, but I’m not going to put the effort in until I know it’s going to work out, and that my part­ner is going to do it too.”

Mas­ter of Manipulation

Other clients have a plan for their lives that seems to work for them, and they try, sub­tly or not so, to impose it upon oth­ers. They do the same thing, which has never worked, over and over, and fig­ure per­sis­tence will even­tu­ally lead to some­thing new. As opposed to try­ing some­thing new, and see­ing what happens.

Mostly, I think, peo­ple are caught in behav­iour loops. They plan and hope and wish, and then assume some­thing has shifted. But here’s the joke: when you shift your under­stand­ing of a sit­u­a­tion, noth­ing out­side of you has shifted! There is no magic, as Zen insists on point­ing out. You, always and end­lessly, have to take the men­tal plan and turn it into con­crete action.

So, all of the plot­ting and plan­ning and rethink­ing, while noble and worth­while so long as it is not obses­sive, accom­plishes noth­ing in the real world. To use my first illus­tra­tion, wor­ry­ing about hav­ing enough money at retire­ment, even bud­get­ing to have enough, is all well and good. Putting cash into a retire­ment account, and leav­ing it there, is the only way to actu­ally have money at retirement.

Sim­i­larly, there is no way to plan for the next school year, beyond list­ing when you are teach­ing what, where. You can buy mate­ri­als, set up your room(s), dis­cuss stu­dents with your teach­ing part­ner. You are, how­ever, delud­ing your­self if you think that this has accom­plished any­thing in terms of day-to-day teaching.

Why?

Because, day by day, stu­dents are going to show up, and each will be who s/he is that day. You can­not plan to cover all con­tin­gen­cies. And even if you could, the odds that you’d be able to recall what you planned as some obscure thing hap­pens, are close to nil.

Wis­dom is “no plan.” It’s inno­va­tion when dis­as­ter strikes

Back when I was train­ing to be a ther­a­pist, I had to sub­mit notes on my ses­sions. The notes con­sisted of the set­ting, details of the person’s week, and what hap­pened dur­ing the ses­sion. Lastly, I had to write a treat­ment plan for the next ses­sion. I did it because that was the only way I could pass, but even then noticed that my plans sel­dom if ever got enacted, because the client refused to coöper­ate by hav­ing noth­ing hap­pen dur­ing the inter­ven­ing week. I had to deal with what was actu­ally going on. Imag­ine how stu­pid this would sound: “I’m really sorry that your hus­band was hit by a truck, but I’d planned to dis­cuss your rela­tion­ship to your mother.”

Yet, many con­duct their rela­tion­ships exactly this way. They see things a cer­tain way, walk into a sit­u­a­tion with their part­ner, stu­dent, mother-in-law (Hi Cheryl!) and expect that the other per­son is going to coöper­ate in what they think should be going on. The next thing you know, you’re angry—furious—that the sit­u­a­tion or other per­son is doing their thing, and aren’t chang­ing to fit your plan.

Liv­ing the Zen Moment

My goal is to per­suade you to min­i­mize the prepa­ra­tion for liv­ing, while max­i­miz­ing actu­ally doing it. And the only place you can “do it” is in the here and now, in this sit­u­a­tion, as this sit­u­a­tion occurs. It doesn’t mat­ter what your plan says, because real­ity is what it is, and is not sub­ject to you or your plans.

So, go ahead and plan and pre­pare, but do so with a light heart and a gen­tle hold. As things change (and of course they will…) go with the flow of it all, let­ting the prep and plan fall to the side, as you sim­ply engage with the moment,with the peo­ple you are actu­ally with, in ways that are ele­gant and centered.