Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
- Allen Saunders
Okay, now that we’ve all had a chance to settle into our resolutions for the year and recognize which ones are actually going to stick, I wanna offer a little inspiration from one of my favorite movies, Dan in Real Life.
Steve Carell stars in this comedy-drama about a widower and his three children who embark on their annual family reunion in New England. In the beginning, Carell’s character discovers his middle daughter (in his mind, not of age to date yet) is “in love” with a boy from her class. She declares she knew after only three days that Marty was the one for her. Carell is adamant, as a parent would so dutifully be, that it’s not possible to fall in love in three days.
He tries to educate his daughter on matters of the heart, bring her down out of the clouds, and teach her the “real” ways of love. That you can’t possibly know you want to be with someone the rest of your life if you’ve only known them for three days. Then Carell gets a dose of his own medicine when he happens upon a woman in the local bookstore. And in the end, must surrender to his daughter. Realizing how very wrong he was.
He parlays this learning experience into his weekly newspaper column on parenting, which is sage advice for us all:
Today, I wanna break from my usual format and talk to you about the subject of plans. Not so much my plan for this column but more like life plans. And how we all make them. And how we hope that our kids make good, smart, safe plans of their own. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, most of the time, our plans don’t work out as we’d hoped. So instead of asking our young people, “What are your plans? What do you plan to do with your life?”, maybe we should tell them this– Plan to be surprised.
So along with our resolutions to improve our lives– be it with work, relationships, spirituality, health– how about also resolving to stay open to the unexpected? Open to surprise? I don’t know about you but I love surprises. Life would be boring without them. And often, life has something better in store for us than we could ever imagine.
If we just stay open.
So how about you? What’s surprised you in your life in a good way? Something or someone you didn’t plan on but couldn’t imagine your life without?
I love that movie.
Motherhood surprised me. How natural it feels – not that I don’t doubt myself constantly (’cause in some ways I do). I can’t imagine life without the little guy now.
That’s beautiful Amber! Motherhood’s definitely one of the biggest surprises and sounds like you’re doing quite well with it
I loved that movie!
You’re so right about embracing the unexpected. Everything from writing to relationships have taken positive turns via that route. Particularly when we’re hoping for growth, staying open seems key. Lovely post, as always. <3
Thank you August
Yes… seems like whenever we stay positive and open, good things always come.
I love this movie too. And I like his quote about “Plan to be surprised.” I could’ve used that message senior year of college. Instead of spending the last month in sheer panic! I thought I had to have a plan. But I ended up ok with only a vague idea.
I hear ya! I could’ve cut out a lot of stress in my life if I’d just known this early on. Thanks for sharing Jess.
You! You surprise me all the time. From the first time we met to this wonderful column. Keep it coming.
Thank you Guy
Having two children, my plan of course was to have them be my legacy. I thought they would have children, planned on their children having children and so on. What I have learned is that planning is so wrong. life is loss and change. After losing both of my children (it took years) but I learned that i wouldn’t have missed one moment or one memory made with them. The only thing we can truly plan on is change. The thing we can hope for is learning lessons from all of these unfulfilled plans and lessons these plans gone array can teach us. Empathy is the most important lesson I have learned. Without loss and change we learn nothing.
Now I must see that movie.
April
Beautiful April. And I couldn’t agree more. I’ve learned similar lessons in my life and you expressed it perfectly. We learn such a great deal through loss and change and especially with disrupted plans. I’m sorry you had to endure such loss but glad you’ve accepted and moved forward with your life. It’s not easy to do. Thank you for sharing
I had planned to not get married and not have children. Then my boyfriend suddenly got custody of his five kids so I moved in, and after a couple years of that we made it official and got married. Go figure. Now, I can definitely imagine my life without all of this, and I think it would be very barren, very empty. I am glad to be here. Fantastic post.
Thank you. Wow! 5 kids! Good for you for being open to all that change, especially in a direction you didn’t think you’d like. That’s huge! And I love that you couldn’t imagine your life any other way. Just beautiful.
I caught this film over Christmas just randomly flicking through the movie channels.
Staying open to new experiences, very important.
Loved this post, Inge!!!
I havent’ seen this movie, but now I will.
p.s. I haven’t forgotten about you…I am sick, sick SICK this week.
Oh! Feel better Jenny! And yes. Watch the movie. It’s so good.