Planning sucks (the life out of you)

I think most people deeply desire the spirit, but they prefer the letter.

This occurred to me as I was thinking about plans.

How many hours of my life went into making plans? A lot of them. Those hours add up to years of my life.

And how many of those plans came to be something? None.

I don’t mean the plans were bad plans or I didn’t follow through. But even the plans I put into action changed and changed again. Then changed some more. In the end, what got me to the final destination was not the plan I made in the beginning.

As I reflect on this, all this planning may be the hotbed for a lot of my frustration, misery, and shame in life. All this planning sows the seeds of the failure I’ll feel later. As I get older, making plans gets harder and harder. Why? Because I know from experience what all that planning will get me in the end: Not much.

So why do I do it?

I came up with two answers to this question.

First, I don’t know what else to do. I grew up and went to school in the United States of America. Planning is what we do here. Perhaps people live lives without planning somewhere in the world, but don’t they live in shanties and under overpasses? There is wisdom in foresight, preparation.

Second, I plan because that’s what I expect everyone else expects of me. When I first started making plans back in high school, I made them as if all the people I wanted to impress were looking over my shoulder. And you know? I imagined those same people looking over my shoulder as I made a plan yesterday. I don’t know exactly why I plan this way, but I’m sure its roots are in my own insecurity and need for validation.

I think there’s a third reason I plan: It’s glory without all the fuss. It’s relatively easy to make an impressive plan at my desk. It’s relatively easy to sell an audience or a client on my plan. Sometimes, I like to just talk about the plan and all the wonderful things it will bring about.

Plans are making believe, which is fun. But life is not make believe.

Life is personal. Life is personal among people. People for whom life is also personal. A plan runs into trouble as soon as it stops being a plan and starts being people interacting with people.

I plan a project for the house. It’s a perfect plan until my wife tells me she doesn’t like it. Now I have a perfect plan and an imperfect situation with my wife. I can do nothing with my perfect plan as long as my wife has a plan of her own. We’ve got to do this thing together. And we’ve got to do it in a way that works for both of us. If you’re married, you know this is hard. Sometimes it’s damn near impossible. But it’s life. In marriage, we’re not living a plan; we’re living a life.

My perfect plan is just a perfect way for me to be perfectly selfish.

And out of touch with reality.

I think the person who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes would say that planning is vanity, a waste of time. Jesus Christ said something similar and so did his brother, James.

Planning is prudent. We have to put it in its proper context. The foremost context is faith in the grace and love of God. Our lives come from God, not our plans. This context allows us to be sober about our plans: We have very little control over the circumstances of our lives. Tomorrow is no guarantee.

Planning as we do it in America, however, can be pathological. It can get in the way of the way God made us to live life. We are created for people, not for planning. And that’s the problem with a lot of plans and planning: It starts and ends with stuff and systems and things that are not people. I’ve been frustrated with fundraising for so many years because most fundraising plans are all about how to get more paper and metal. They have very little to do with how to draw close to other human beings in fellowship, love, and service.

I know why: Paper and metal are relatively easy to manage. People are impossible to manage. You can only relate to them. And they always force you to change yourself.

But that’s where you’ll find God. Not in your plans, but among the people around you. That’s where you’ll find abundant life. Not when you accomplish your goals someday, but when you leave your desk to meet someone at a table. Not when you bend the world to your program, but when you let God change and form you through the world around you.

It’s funny: We often make our plans in hope that they will surround us with love. Think about it: It’s true. Our plans can’t do that.

Only people can. Spend less time planning and more time reaching out and relating. Get ready for something better than anything you could plan for.