The Best Laid Plans....

Subtitle: Laughing all the way

Robert Burns (the Scots poet who wrote the poem "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November 1785") surely was not the first to describe how essentially futile are our animal efforts to make something out of the universal entropy.  But since he did, his words are the ones many people use to express the concept, including the great American novelist John Steinbeck.  

I think that the year formerly known as 2020 has given us all a healthy serving of humble pie in place of our usual recipe of masterful planning.  

Take heart though.  Burns commiserates:  

"But Mousie, you are not alone
In proving foresight may be vain
The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Often go awry
And leave us nothing but grief and pain
For promised joy!"

We all thought we were adulting pretty well, right? We thought our i's were dotted and our t's were crossed. We had enough life insurance, our kids' afternoon's were stuffed full of all-important after-school enrichment activities, our kitchens and garages had all the necessary gadgets, the cars were waxed, the budgets balanced, our mascara touched up. Just as soon as we got our tax return, we would get right to work on replacing that roof/fence/sod/bedroom set. We had our cruise all set up for Spring Break, and our summer vacation camps arranged. Everything was planned out, just so.

And then, in painfully slow motion, and yet faster than I've ever known anything to happen before in this world, everything changed. All the plans were laid waste. There was grieving for what we had lost, while at the same time we all breathed a giant sigh of relief that the ENTIRE world had finally stopped and we could all get the hell off and catch our breath for a minute.

Sooner than we were ready, the world started slowly spinning again, and it's gaining velocity; soon, it will be back to the usual tempo, the same mind-splitting, breath-taking, keeping-up-with-the-Jones pace.  Before COVID, my dirty little secret, held deeply down beneath a thick veneer of education, training, preparation and overall busy-ness, was that it just a matter of time before I would make a little misstep, and all the spinning plates that I was holding up, various bits and pieces of my life, would come crashing down.  The pandemic certainly dulled the crash.  I disappeared, and some noticed, but many didn't.  Perhaps they looked the other way, pretended not to see.  They are dealing with their own issues, I get it.  

Here's the real question - why did it take just one misstep?  Why was I beneath this giant mass of spinning plates in the first place?  Why am I not allowed to make a mistake?  In one sense, I put myself there - I take responsibility for my part.  In another sense, I was completely abandoned by those I was trying my absolute very best to serve.  Not my family, and not my close friends - these people always got the very least of my time and energy, and gave me pass after pass when I couldn't be at an event for my son's school/go out with friends/manage to get to a planned self-care appointment/insert other life event here....because...work.  These same people have continued to stand with me when my workplace threw me out like so much unsavory trash on garbage day.  This is the same workplace for which I sacrificed hundreds of hours of time away from what was really important.  As more and more was asked of me, I, who always play by the rules, tell the truth, do the right thing, said "Yes, of course, I can do that."  When I started saying "I can't anymore", I was met with disappointment, disapproval, hostility, even threats.  FOR MY PATIENTS, I kept soldiering on, trying to do the right thing, unable to see my own human limitations.  

What I know today is I cannot do it all.  I should not do it all.  I don't want to do it all.  I don't have to do it all.  I need a lot of help, and if I do not have that help, I don't have to do it. I don't have to put my shoulder down, struggle through, be a martyr.  Nope.  Not today.  I have nothing to prove to anyone.  They have stolen the heart from inside me, but this does not define me.  I know who I am.  

Burns finishes out his nihilistic poem with the following wistful stanza:

"Still you are blessed compared with me
Only the present touches you
But oh, I cast my eye backward
On dreary prospects!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!"

I refuse. I refuse to cast my gaze backward and wallow in the pain, and I refuse to fear the upcoming unknown. No, Mr. Burns. Just no. HARD NO.

Because this is it, folks. This is the day. The only day. Maybe it all amounts to nothing in the end, maybe it gets all torn to bits and shreds, but that's not right here and right now, so I might as well BE HERE. Today is all I've got, and I've got SO MUCH TODAY! I am going to open my arms wide and lift up my face. I will LOVE, LAUGH, LEARN. I will lean into the wave crashing over my head and come up GASPING with excitement. When I work, I will lean into the work, and when I leave the hospital, I will leave it behind. When something unpleasant needs to be done, I will do it efficiently and humbly and thank the universe for my blessings. The outcome is not in my hands, and neither is the process sometimes. My powerlessness is huge and what I can control so limited. Plans, schemes, expectations, busy-ness be damned! 

Here's what really matters:

Good friends Layla and Vivi Martin - our last pre-COVID visitors

Funny faces

Jammies, iPad and headphones - this is the life!

Little man can still fit on my lap.

Reading before bedtime

Sunrise over Hillsborough Bay.

Walking with Auntie Kimmy on Weedon Island

Bedtime....

Our first COVID family airplane trip - to Indianapolis.

Love this guy.

So grateful to live close to the beach...

Walking on St Pete Beach looking for shells with Auntie Kimmy.

Good times with Mason, Rafa and Charlie Girl.

Date night with my main squeeze at Paradiso.

Too cool for school...

Warmest jammies ever!  Perfect for Pennsylvania.

Masks 'r' us

Another bedtime....

Reveling in the Porsche Experience.

Enjoying a visit with Uncle Dany and Aunt Andrea.

Another stripe!  Hi 5 with Master Josh

Hurricane Party with Cousins Lorena and Gaby.

Ice cream face...

WhatsApp Family Chat

Rafa and Grace

Getting creative for Rafa's 8th birthday party.

Ramen noodles....

I am so grateful for these moments from the past year, and so many others too.  This is the meaning.  This is what's important.  This, MORE of this, is what I work for.  I want to work as little as possible so that my work does not infringe on my LIFE.  I don't have anything left to prove to anyone.  

This year's word is HUMILITY. I grovel before no one. I know who I am. So it is, and so it should be. Thank you universe for these lessons. Keep them coming.