4:40am
Living an unplanned life…Yes mom, everything boils down to how to live a life we did not plan. Yes, living an unplanned life. What a title, what a path!
Living an unplanned life is not equal to a life on stage. Living an unplanned life is not glamorous or a walk in the park. Living an unplanned life means turbulence, ambiguity, many struggles, and many hours alone.
In many cases, living an unplanned life is a life of silence and many shed tears. Living an unplanned life is living in the palms of G-d. It is a life of trust and a life without fear. Living an unplanned life is a life of embracing what is given and what is. It is living life in the moment.
Living an unplanned life requires one to develop quietness within. It is about wanting to live without wanting to change it. It is about letting it move through you without destroying you. It is about letting go while holding on. It is about accepting while still fighting. It is about being in peace while in the biggest battle and being unsettled when the ocean is still.
It is about wanting to live without wanting to change it.
Living the unplanned life is a life of paradoxes, miracles, “should-not-have-beens”, and “could-not-happen.” It is a life of disbelief, but with faith and trust. It is a life of walking barefooted on the sharp edge of a stainless blade.
No one can prepare you. No one can help you. No one can guide you. No one can do it for you; no one except Divine Providence.
Living an unplanned life is living. It is true; it is real.
Living a life according to our plan is a trap, lie, and an illusion. The most difficult thing about an unplanned life is understanding your place in it. Once you understand it, then you must claim it.
Most likely what happened before will have no meaning in the life after. In other words, if your life before the shift was to some degree according to your will, plans, and visions, thus full of hopes and meanings, then the life after will have none of that.
In fact, it will take three to four years to comprehend how life will unravel. Life will never ever be as it was before. The trajectory of our path is altered forever till the last breath we take.
Regardless of how many tears we may shed or how many sleepless nights we endure, our path will not be restored to as it once was and it will not rid our current life-after.
An unplanned life, the life-after, is just a gift we want to send away without wrapping. To accept unwanted gifts is one of the biggest challenges. It doesn’t look or feel like a gift at all. Nevertheless, it is.
The unplanned life, the life-after, is a field where you have to meet yourself, face yourself, live with yourself, and deal with every light, gray, or dark part of you. They are the parts you would not be able to stand or must learn to respect.
The life-after is the life we are secretly or openly wishing away. It is something that our whole being and every cell reject. It is profoundly foreign to us just like a vegetable we’ve never seen or tasted before. It just doesn’t agree with us.
If it did agree with us, it would be in our plans. Alas it’s repulsive and promotes vomiting. It is like food that makes us gag no matter how healthy it is. The unplanned life is like food that is forced on us. It is something we have to learn to swallow and digest.
That is why when under public eye, we swallow what is given to us to appear as strong as a nail, but when we are alone at home, we puke and puke. Just like a troubled teenager, we are left alone with the heavy burden of life. Without the proper care, we are destined to disappear.
Note : After I finished writing the above, I felt sick. So my son interrupted the dictation and said:
Mom what is happening to you? I know it is very hard, but you will get your break and you will survive. Just survive today. Just be with me today. Endure, endure, endure. I know you don’t want to do anything else. You don’t have to; I am with you.