Life Not According to Plan

There are those of us who like to have their future planned out, and those of us who prefer spontaneity, reveling in the uncertainty. I like to think that I am somewhere in between the two; I try to do enough planning to give myself some direction and a sense of my goals, but I don't always worry if things don't go exactly the way I expect them to.


The end of this month will mark the third anniversary of the day I moved to Japan. The odd thing is, though, that only four years ago if anyone had told me that I would be moving to Tokyo to start a career after graduating from university, I probably would have laughed in their face and brushed it off in disbelief. But nevertheless here I am, having now lived in Japan much longer that even I would have guessed after first arriving.


Over the last few months and in various conversations with my close friends, I have had a little bit of time to reflect on where I am now in spite of how inconceivable my current circumstances might have seemed in the past. These reflections have occasioned me to think about some of the other things in my life that haven't gone the way I thought they would have, starting with the university that I wanted to attend and leading all the way up to my current living arrangements.


While these things would take an awfully long time for me to explain in detail--and I may explain more of it in future posts--I think it's pretty safe to say that life often takes some very unexpected twists and turns. And those twists and turns, as many of my friends and family in America are discovering, can be disappointing as often as they are exciting. But based on my own experiences, and still mindful that some of these unexpected situations end up much worse than we would like them to, I think that these events can help us to mature and make us wiser.


What is the practical application of this maturity and wisdom? I think that it enables us to give good counsel to other people who have to make important decisions about their lives. I also believe that it can help us to be more sympathetic to others when they are going through tough times.


If we are lucky, sometimes those events in our lives that end up completely different than how we had things planned can actually turn out better than what we might have imagined for ourselves. (I myself am certainly thankful for the life I have now.) I certainly hope that those unforeseen changes of circumstance in your own life turn out to be more often fortuitous than unfavorable. And in the end, maybe the best lesson that we can take from these experiences is that sometimes the best things in life come to us when nothing goes according to plan.

▼▽▼▼【講師】Melanie先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━ ・【Home for the (Summer) Holidays】2009.08.14 (Fri)