Are you leading a Planned Life?

I had a longish chat with my buddy VS, who's in US for a short visit. We caught up with lot of things and discussed everything under the sun (college life, professional life and family life, etc). The finale touching point to this conversation was his revelation about his elevation as a soon-to-be parent. Though we discussed about other things, some sentences lingered in my mind and I could not help but post all those thoughts on this blog. The common thread to my conversation with VS was all about "planning".

Planning is a commonly used term, an intention or decision to do something/achieve something in the future. Everyone leads a planned life. Why? You are planned (pun intended) by your parents. Your nursery/school/college/tuition classes--all these things are planned to last minute. Well, nowadays with the tacky admission process, some plans of getting admitted to the planned institution (nursery, school, college) may go haywire. But then your parents have a second choice plan as well. I personally think that I have gone to some second choice/ tenth choice places due to my lack of achieving the standard my parents had planned for me. Luckily you plan to go to xyz country to do your higher studies, you plan to work with so and so advisor, and then again you always have a "Plan of Study" (something required in Universities). You plan to graduate soon and have a job asap. The girl you marry is selected by your parents (in most cases), because that's what they have planned for you depending on caste/religion, etc. Once you get married, you become the "man with the plan". I listen to online radio at City1016 and liked RJ Abhijeet's tagline: "Listen to spindoctor RJ Abhijeet, the man with the plan". The tag has been used by yours truly in this blog.

After marriage, you have a co-planner (might be your advantage or your disadvantage, depends on how you look at it). You plan to buy a new car, new house, new furniture,etc. You plan to give x% of your salary to your wife for blowing on unwanted purchases (read shopping). Eventually you end up with family planning (pun intended). The planning cycle goes on and on. What I realized from this is: "don't get upset when some plans don't work out". Your life should be like that presentation, where you always have backup slides. Having backup slides creates a good impression: 1. You have anticipated what questions the audience is likely to ask, 2. You impress everyone because you have "outplanned" them. I correlate the presentation with my Life, where you have life events going on as slides and then when something unexpected happens (read fate), you have your backup slides/options to fall back on. This post may also be because I am planning to work efficiently on my PhD proposal presentation with the same style. In any case, if you read this post and like it, I am planning to read your comments. Enough of planning, have to go meet Wifey/in-laws for long weekend, then again that was planned months ago.. LOL

PS: By my standards, the best planners I have met are my relations on the wife's side. That's another post LOL