Living a "Plan B" Life

Occasionally I get to thinking about the events in my life that has led me to my current position. How did I end up living out here again? What caused me to get into the kind of work I am doing? Why do I surround myself with my current set of friends? Who am I today compared to who I thought I was going to be? Fumbling through all of the memories that are my journey and trying to sort them out into answers to some of these questions brings up a lot of laughter and an equal amount of pain. For the most part I can at least say it was an interesting ride to get here, even the bumpy parts.

Several years ago I was convinced that I was going to do something really big and propel myself into the lifestyle of the rich and famous. I spend many hours working out a series of plans for how I was going to reach escape velocity and break out of the chains that were holding me at the place I was in life. I thought I could invent something that everyone on the planet would need at least 2 of or that I would be the musician that everyone wanted to hear all the time. I had a lot of ideas about how I was going to achieve greatness. Well, I gave up on being an astronaut, rock star, inventor and several other paths that I seen my self following.

Looking back on some of these ideas I see why a lot of those plans didn’t work out and that I was stumbling around most of the way to where I am now. My original plans just never seemed to work and I realized that I am living a “Plan B” life. That is when I started thinking about if I ever have a “Plan B” and I have to admit that I did not. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely happy with where I am and what I am doing. I have a wonderful life. I just don’t understand exactly how I ended up here. When I look around at most of the people I know I realize I am not alone in the “Plan B” column which makes me smile.

I could have easily made my way to where I am if I had planned it. It would have been really boring though. I used to get down when one of my efforts to change the world failed. The more failures that I encountered the more I got to appreciate the lessons I learned. I like to learn and have a great hunger for knowledge. I spent a few years finding new ways to fail just so I could learn more. Little did I know at the time that all I was learning was how not to do something. Eventually the seeking failure wasn’t quite as amusing as it was at first. That is when I decided it was time to take a little more serious look at what I was doing and try to find something I could do and stick with it for a while.

To set the record straight, I think everyone should jump out there and fail as much as they can afford to without losing everything. It is a really liberating feeling to put all your effort into something that amounts to absolutely nothing by the time it’s all said and done. The humility one achieves upon the realization that it’s time to head back to the drawing board is one of life’s greatest gifts. If it were not for that gift, the pleasure of succeeding would not be such a big deal. The thrill of victory is pretty boring unless you are very familiar with the agony of defeat.

Living the “Plan B” life is not horrible by any means. I spent way too much time thinking that I needed to do more and try harder to get to a new level. I don’t consider it wasted time though because I have the experiences that when summed up make me who I am today. Not to get too deep into belief systems but I do have a very firm belief that a person finds themselves where they need to be when they need to be there. I used to panic if I thought I was running late for something but as time rolled on I started to notice that there were things that happened as a result of me being where I happened to be. I also avoided some pretty nasty things by not getting there too early, I’m sure everyone has driven up on an accident that could have been them if they hadn’t stopped to do something.

My life has turned out to be perfect because of the fact that it’s anything but perfect. I haven’t made a fortune, married a movie star, moved to my own secluded island or become a house hold name. All the things that I dreamed I would accomplish and that I thought would be what would make me happy are actually far from where I have found happiness. Being a student of the human condition I have studied a lot of humans that were in a wide variety of conditions including myself. Most of the knowledge I have acquired points to a really odd formula for finding personal happiness. Talk to someone who is close to the end of their journey and they will tell you the thing of greatest value to them are the memories. Good memories or bad, the memories are what make use human. It is also very difficult to remove a memory from someone so a memory can be considered a possession.

While I have not completed my work on the formula for personal happiness, I have gotten some of the constants established so I feel it is safe to show what I have found so far. First of all, find the desire to change the world and develop some ideas and plans to make it happen. Attempt to implement these ideas and plans. If it works out then you get the warm feeling of having changed the world otherwise you get the chance to learn and gain some humility. Next step is to accept that “Plan B” is most likely the preferred path through life anyway, let go of the things you have no control over. The ability to enjoy the evolution of your own life as it is happening is definitely something to strive for. Take time to reflect on your experiences and try to find away to use the knowledge of failures to take on something bigger for your next attempt. Repeat the cycle as many times as you can and try not to burn any bridges in the process.

Living the “Plan B” life is the only life I would want to live. Nobody could have convinced me of that as a teenager. Learning to fail gracefully and still keep pushing forward is probably the biggest success that anyone can achieve. Life keeps coming whether you are ready for it or not so acceptance of where you are at is really key to being able to enjoy yourself and find the strength to keep trying to improve. Next time you are dusting yourself off after falling on your face, take the time to think about how it happened and laugh at how it must have looked like to someone else. Live the life you have and see where it takes you.