Different Trains

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost. 
Dalai Lama XIV

I’ve never really understood the folks who plan their life’s trajectory down to the minute. You know, the ‘I’ll have my ideal job at 25, marry the love of my life (not yet met) at 28, first kid at 30, second and final at 33, we’ll have a house in Weston and vacation on Nantucket by the time we’re 35.’ types.

I’ve spent a lot of years scoffing at these sorts. The big, grandiose timeline regarding love and marriage seemed like a great way to shoot yourself in the ass. After all, who can know what opportunities, what happy chances, challenges or tragedies will walk around that next corner.

Maybe that scoffing had a slender root in feeling a smackerel of envy of these Big Planners’ self confidence. Perhaps there was a touch of jealousy of their ability to just know their lives would/could follow their chosen lovely path.

Being diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis Type II at the age of 23 definitely threw a wee spanner into my works. ‘Why get my hopes up for a great career or a brill match -- I’ll be deaf any time now and who’ll want me then?’ OOOF, what self indulgent, depressing twaddle!

Sadly, my much loved, older cousin Carmel (who also had NF II) planted these seeds -- watered and fed them anyway. She’d advised me NOT to tell Stan (the young man I was shacked up with) or any possible future suitor lest they bolt.

My response? ‘Why would I want to be involved with someone that shallow, selfish and dimbulbed? Please! If they clock out because of the NF II, I’ll know they weren’t worth having.’ Yup, disease as canary in the coal mines of love.

I can’t honestly pin all of my lack of firm planning, my meandering path toward happiness and fulfillment on my little schwannoma buddies.

Some of the non-planning was based in an unrelated lack of hope and self-confidence. A piece of it was that I just didn’t think to do it or even know how. Thank Kali for personal growth and evolution!

More often than otherwise, I’ve lived in the NOW (at most in the next week or three) and that’s worked out OK.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
Woody Allen

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
John Lennon,

מאן טראַוך, גאָט לאַוך.

Different Trains -- Steve Reich - Quartetto Prometeo 2013