Life happens.
You may make allowances for it, plan around it, or try to account for it, but regardless, it will happen and you cannot stop it.
Many have heard the phrase "shit happens," and in fact, it makes up half of one of the central tenets of my life philosophy, though it takes the slightly more poetic form of "Expect the best, plan for the worst."
"Shit" is only shit if you let it be shit. It's only "shit" if you know that it will happen and yet you go on into life without a contingency plan, assuming that it will go correctly on the first try, you'll get it on the first take and everything will go swimmingly from then on. If you assume that Plan A will work, and you don't make a Plan B, "shit" will happen. If you expect that Plan A may possibly go better than you expected, better than you planned, shit will happen. Yes, this does happen, but only rarely, and it should not be planned on. If you plan like this, with ridiculous, misplaced optimism, your plan will mess up. AND SHIT WILL HAPPEN, and you be left out in the cold. And then you will become jaded and pessimistic, neither of which is a way to live life, despite how many people may be attracted to it. You get out of life what you put into it, and if you put a lot of negative energy into living, you will recieve negativity in return. If you act surly and jaded all of the time, the only people who will be able to stand you are other surly, jaded people. Besides, a failure to plan for failure is a sign of a weaker mind, of a person who leaves all to chance, and is that really who you want to be seen as?
Contrast the above with the person who start off with the assumption that shit happens. They don't expect the best, are caught off balance by a scenario that would be a great situation for anyone else is for them a miserable death march. Andrew Johnson never expected to become president after Lincoln's death, but he did and he hated the job. Things didn't go well for him in the position and he ended up being the first US President to ever be impeached.
Those who know that life happens, those who know that they need to plan for the worst but expect the best (yes, the order can be switched, but just don't mangle it, like plan for the best, expect the best) they are the ones who will succeed like Bismarck, like King Louis XIV, and like Ivan the IV of Russia. They succeeded because they planned for the worst but expected the best. They never displayed their indecision. And they went forth every day, demanding that only the best outcomes from the world and they recieved it.
However, people today refuse to make decisions. They vacillate endlessly between multiple decisions, focusing on the negative outcomes and weighting them heavier than any positive ones, which, more often than not, causes the road with the least good to be taken, only because there is little recoil. Or, on the opposite spectrum, people refuse to plan for the worst, expecting only good can come of their plans, as if they have a sort of Midas touch. They have bought too heavily into what they were told as children: "If you work hard, you can be whatever you want to be!" And so they just skip the planning part, believing that if they work hard, soon someone will notice them, without their having to do any self-promotion or have a backup plan or do anything besides being a workhorse, or a man on a hamster wheel. The hamster runs and runs and runs but doesn't get anywhere, but continues to run until he finally gives up, exhausted.
But their hard work doesn't excuse them from a central fact of life: Life happens. And it hits them hard. They wake up one day, and the stock market has crashed, their shop has burned down, their computer was erased, and they have nothing to fall back on. Or they come out of grad school, summa cum laude, expecting job opportunities to be laid before them like palms before Christ, and they are supremely disappointed. But then they see their colleagues with jobs lined up and they wonder "how did she get all of those when I got much better grades?" It's because while he was working at the college store and studying during the downtime, she was looking up companies who were hiring and applying for thrity, forty, fifty different jobs.
But the summa cum laude has to ask his classmate how she got those jobs. And the classmate responds, "I lined these up last summer!"
But her response isn't nearly as important as what she doesn't say: "And I didn't expect so many to be left."
Successful people are also a little bit lucky. Think of all of the beautiful people you see every day. How many do you think are models, or actors or actresses? Why didn't your band become famous, but Prince's band did? Why didn't your internet business take off and Google did? Why didn't you become a successful comedian and JERRY did? Hell, he stole some of your jokes!
Yes, Prince had the patronage of Owen Husney. Yes, Google was Google. And Jerry was Jerry. But more importantly, these people planned for the worst and expected the best. They understood that life will happen and that it can deal good cards as well as bad. They knew the odds and they took their own cards. Because they also knew that if you let anyone or anything else pick your cards for you, it can only lead to evil in the long run. YOU must control which hand you're dealt.
So plan for your life. It's not like you can restart if things go badly, so you might as well take control.
Now before I go, I'd like to request a moment of silence for the death of Michael Jackson (over a fucking month ago!). The man was very good at what he did.
However, I'd also like to mention how if anyone of us normal people thought about Michael Jackson on Wednesday, June 24, they would likely remember him as "Wacko Jacko," the accused child molester, alleged vitiligo sufferer, and presumed plastic surgery addict.
It's funny how someone's death can change public opinion of that person. Yesterday (on June 26th!), almost all of my friends who, previously, had almost unilaterally declaimed him as something along the lines of "creepy pervert," were now changing their Facebook statuses to something along the lines of "RIP MJ. You will be missed for your genius," or "RIP MJ, God wanted his angel back." Now I'm not quite up on my theology, but the way I've always heard it is that "creepy pervert" is few steps away from "angel."
But maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, I meant no disrespect to the man, I just wanted to point this out.
(This has taken way too goddamn long to put up. I started this post way back in mid-June and it's August fucking 5th!)
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