Many people try, well rather most people try but you
can’t plan your life out. From the moment most of us enter school, we start
thinking of how our lives will go. What college/university we will go to, what
job we will get, or what career we will venture in. It’s an arduous list of
plans, checklists and goals over things we really have no control over; unless
you live your life so carefully, you hardly live at all.
You see, it’s the surprises, the changes, the unanticipated
moments that mould your life. It’s the things you don’t plan that alter your
future and have a large hand in who you are to become. It’s the bumps along the
way, the unforeseen potholes, and the strangers you pick up. It’s the forks in
the road, the unmarked road signs and the wrong turns that lead you to where
you should ultimately end up.
The difference is how you react to those changes.
Do you warmly accept and welcome the unexpected or do you try to fight it,
slamming the door in its face?
For those who try to fight the unpredicted, life
seems more like a battlefield than a playground of new opportunity. Fighting
the unexpected only sets them up for a lifetime of challenges and lost battles.
Because you can’t fight the unforeseen, it will only enter through an unlocked
window.
Those who have learned to truly live know that the unforeseen
should not be fought but welcomed. The unanticipated is inevitable and you can
either choose to greet it like an enemy or welcome it as a friend who is going
to bring you to new places and introduce you to new people in your life.
The unexpected is missing your flight and spending
the day in the airport lounge talking to strangers who end up inviting you to
their party. It’s the time your train is delayed so you take another that has a
stop in a totally different town for a couple of days. It’s not getting into
the college/university of your dreams, but getting into another you never
considered, where you end up meeting your best friends for life. It’s when you
didn’t get that job you wanted and spent the day sulking in bed. But lo and
behold another job was offered to you, one that changed everything.
Because life is never going to work out how you
planned and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will start greeting the
unexpected with open arms. Let the unknown, the unplanned and the possibility
of change excite you and keep the future an unknown secret that can only be
found out through time.
It’s the unforeseen that changes your life that
takes you to new places and brings you to new people. It’s what adds vitality
and mystery to our seemingly dull lives. So let the unexpected take you to
places you never knew, introduce you to friends you’ve never met and bring new
meaning to your life.
The unforeseen is not a deviation from the plan;
it’s just the new plan. Changes, unforeseen occurrences and surprises are what
help define your future. It’s the plan that you didn’t realize you had, but
should most definitely adhere to. The unforeseen should never be viewed as bad,
but a necessary detour on the highway of life.
It’s that job you got when you didn’t get the other
one. It’s the people you met when you missed your train who introduced you to
new things, a new world. It’s the towns you discovered when you took another
path, because the other was closed.
Being able to “roll with the punches” is a very
admirable and important trait. Being able to adapt to change and welcome it
will make life not only a lot easier, but also more fun.
It will open another world of opportunity and give
you a freedom many people will never experience. Because being able to adapt to
change and understand it as a good thing is a necessary quality to living
stress free and also as freely and confidently as that soulful bunch that just
lets life take them where they should go.
The unforeseen is a friend in itself, but it is
also the key to meeting new ones. Without change, there would be no reason to
meet anyone new. There would be no room for new people or new experiences. It’s
the unexpected that brings you to the new places with the new people who have
yet to make an impression on your life.
Without the unforeseen, you would have never met
those people in the airport or your best friends at college/university. There’s
a lot of interesting people out there and the unexpected is just the stops on
the path to meeting them.
Only those who are ready for the unforeseen can
live a full life. Those who are excited by the unknown and the unplanned are
those who are most free, the least unshackled by the monotony of life. They are
ready for everything, yet at the same time, never ready. Accepting the unforeseen
as a welcomed friend is the only way to stay ahead of the game, to not let
change knock you down or to be afraid to face the unknown.
If you’re the kind of person who looks at life with
a “glass half full” mentality, then you know that every missed opportunity is
just another opportunity waiting to be unveiled. Because there is no such thing
as shut doors, just ones that have yet to be opened. Every wrong turn, every
mistake, every delay is just another opportunity to experience something new.
It’s the missed chances that turn into new
opportunities, opportunities that would have never arisen if you didn’t miss
that flight or get into your chosen college/university. Not getting that job
you wanted just means you were meant for a different one, one that may be
better for you.
The unforeseen can be hard to embrace to the extent to
which we human beings sometimes fiercely resist it, and how that resistance can
sometimes jeopardize our chances of meeting our personal goals.
Figuring out how to “bridge” to a new set of
circumstances can feel so daunting. This can even be true even when the
unforeseen is positive. Yet, in spite of the challenges in managing through a
transition, I have learned from my own experience that embracing the unexpected
and evaluating its ramifications may likely result in positive outcomes.
Compiled by Ashley Mwanza from various sources.
Compiled by Ashley Mwanza from various sources.
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