The Short Story: The Best Laid Plans Edition
Issue 5 - April.2021
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about plans — about those things we really, really want or mean to do before life gets in the way. Four years ago, I planned to be celebrating the first woman president, traveling more, and exposing the bottom half of my face in public. I’d also planned to send this email at 8 am this morning, but, you know…
We all make plans. We pin our hopes and dreams into orderly lines and tell the universe, “This! This is what I want!” and the universe, whether from indifference or obstinance, generally responds with adding wrinkles, throwing curveballs, or even delivering a well-timed punch to the mouth.
That's the thing about planning, about hoping — it's a quintessentially human behavior.
I watch my cat live his day. He largely just responds to stimulus — the rattle of food in his bowl, a bird in the window, a new batch of sunbeams on the studio floor. Sure, he will make the occasional choice about whether to sit in my lap or to stretch out on the couch, but I don't see him sitting and scheming. He doesn't spend his Sunday nights with his project management apps open or constructing a visualization board — he leaves all of that to the humans in the house.
I love that we try to plan our lives because I love what it says about us — that we hope for bigger things. It means we center ourselves in the midst of the giant universe and assume we, tiny frail beings that we are, can somehow control the chaos swirling around us.
Sometimes, we get lucky and everything works out, but usually our best laid plans result in the universe reminding us how little control we really have over our lives — and, yet, in an act of beautiful defiance — we get up every day and do it over and over again.
Here’s a few things I’ve been reading this week about our best laid plans.
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Mike Tyson
I can honestly say this is the FIRST time I’ve ever quoted Mike Tyson in… well, anything — but this statement is both hilarious and profound and I think about it a lot.
In his article about this famous utterance, Mike Berardino says, “What I like so much about the quote is that its application stretches far beyond boxing. It really has meaning in any area of life, whether the blow comes from a health issue, losing your job, making a bad investment, a traffic jam, whatever. It's how you react to that adversity that defines you, not the adversity itself.” Read the rest of the article here.
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Robert Burns
To a Mouse, by the Scottish poet, Robert Burns is about Burns’ regret at having destroyed a field mouse’s home with his plough — but like all poems — it’s ACTUALLY about something else. It’s about regret and the cruelty of fate. It’s about how our plans can be so easily upended by one another or by mere happenstance.
For some reason, I forgot that the copy I had was written in Scots. Scots isn’t Scottish and it isn’t English, but it’s close enough to English that if you’re exhausted and read it, you might keep reading it over and over wondering what happened to your brain or if you’re in the Wordplay episode of The Twilight Zone. I’ll be nice and link you to a copy that has a translation.
Future Plans
Ryan Hudson
I’m pretty obsessed with web comics and finding one that involved both PLANS and PUNCHES seems pretty serendipitous.
Finding this comic wasn’t even part of my original plan.
Am I Willing to Punch a Peacock?
Me
Peacocks are proof that the universe is a chaotic and dangerous place. They’re sooooo pretty, and yet, soooooo evil. If you’ve never heard about the time I planned to treat Kai to a fun lunch at a park full of peacocks, well, let me just tell you, it didn’t go according to plan.
Check out the video of me telling the story at an event at Mayfield Park surrounded by the very same peacocks who terrorized us or listen to it on the Stories Found podcast.
Thanks for joining me this week! For those of you who are new here, welcome! Feel free to check out past issues in the archives. For those who’ve been with me since the beginning — thanks for sticking around (it’s been a weird few years, huh?). The current plan is to send an email every Thursday, so look for me in your inbox then.
*shouts into the void* That’s the PLAN, Universe, so just be cool, okay?
Until next time,
Ava
If you enjoy The Short Story, let me know! I love to hear from fellow humans and/or sentient robots.
Also, if you've written, made, or read something that you’d love to see featured in a future edition, send it my way — I’m always excited to share your work here in The Short Story or on my podcast, Stories Found.
Send submissions to: avalovehanna@gmail.com
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