Ladies and gentlemen! Some logical stuff dropped in my head today.
I had a lecturer at 2pm and got to school around that time. As I entered my school gate, I saw a lot of banners placed around the entrance. Some of them were huge.
There are two routes to get to my class at psychology. From the entrance, I could go down the road and turn right. I could also take a turn right into a field a few steps from the gate. This would mean walking on a diagonal path, making the distance considerably shorter. I preferred the second route for obvious reasons.
However, some construction work is ongoing in that field. It was barricaded with makeshift fence. Not backing down, people created a path right behind one of the fences. I’m uncertain if the new path can still be classified as a shortcut
ANywAy, I noticed that part of the makeshift fence was removed last week. So, people, including me, have resumed passing the field shortcut.
As I entered school today, the boards blocked my view of the field. I wanted to ensure that the makeshift fence was still removed today… My intention was to see if the field was still assessable, and if not, to quickly switch to the detour behind one of the fences.
Right from the gate, I tried to stretch my neck, but couldn’t see a thing. I also tried to walk faster.
Then, it hit me that no matter how hard I tried, I would not have seen the field. Even if I jumped, it would have also been pointless at that moment. If I eventually got close enough and saw the fence has been put back up, it would take me less than 5 seconds to backtrack to the detour. In contrast, I could have also seen that the fence was still down when I got close enough. That would have also been great.
The point here is that I did not need to know the state of the fence until I was right in front of it.
This is how some of us approach life. We try to plan, prepare, and put things in place days, month, and years before they happen. We plan an original move and a spare one in case the first did not work out. In trying to peer into the future, we overtask our minds and bodies. Soon, if we can’t project what the future holds, worry begin to set in. We ask ourselves questions like, “how would I cope”. If, per chance, we do get a glimpse of how the future will be, we still worry and then struggle to align ourselves to that future picture. Our anxiety goes through the roof when we think we are not doing enough and “will never make it” to the point we have envisioned.
How about we pause and consider this: there is a reason our human eyes have a limit to what they see. We can only see so far because we should only see so far. It is also an indication that we need to move forward to see the great distance materialise before us. This tells us to calm down. We can get to the farthest point we see now if we just keep moving. The pace hardly matters. Also, stretching our necks or pausing to jump to peer even further will only slow us down.
So, there is no need to worry about the unknown or known future. It is fine to plan ahead, but don’t let that be the only thing that occupies your mind, so you don’t end up only seeing the options you have created for yourself.
My options were to pass the diagonal shortcut if the fence was still down, or take the detour behind one of the fences if the opposite was the case. I did not think of the possibility of neither of those options being available. If this was the case, I may have been taken aback, and the thought of taking the long route would have been distressing. However, if I had the intention to work around any situation I was met with, taking the longer route would not have been much of a problem. See that? In my “unpreparedness”, I was ready to think on the spot and tackle anything that came my way.
I charge you to relax on the A-Z planning and worry about the future, and to take things in good stride.
These are 500 words (or more ?)! Talk to you tomorrow!