Plans.

If you take the time to make plans, you expect them to play out, right? You put all of your energy, love, and time into whatever it is that is so important to you: a college degree, a marriage, a child, a career. Nothing will get in your way or distract you from making that plan unfold exactly as you have foreseen in your mind. After all, that is the purpose of a plan. Plain and simple.

But what happens when the plan does not play out exactly as one has planned? The bumps, the obstacles, the dead ends. All the time, blood, sweat, and tears... for what? For a "plan" that ultimately had no perfect story or happy ending. Then what? What happens to that energy or the chapters that were written in one's head but went unwritten in life? Does it all just disappear without another thought?

Could it just be easier to go through life plan-less? No happy endings, yet no pain of failure? If there is no plan to begin with, does the heartbreak of a broken plan go away as well? One day at a time: no expectations; no disappointments.
Or is the excitement of a plan and the roads paved to reach the plan the way to go? Hard work, determination, and the feeling of success if the plan unravels as intended. Is that the secret to life?

I've lived both ways. I have found instant happiness in the plan-less years: no expectations= surprises, excitement, and a carefree existence that opened up a whole new world for me. But, there were also cloudy, hard-to-focus paths in front of me that, at times, left me with confusion, wonder, and thoughts of idle laziness that did not please me one bit. On the flip-side, the planned years turned bad caused me to experience heartache in a way that I never knew was possible. The long-term effects of failure from the planned years that went monstrously wrong still linger around at times. Although the thoughts of the "what ifs" have been retired and buried forever, the fear of making those mistakes again has made a permanent home in both my heart and my mind.

At the end of the day, I just want to know that I am living my life to the fullest, be it through a well-thought out plan or through moments of spontaneity and excitement. If one path is easier today, the other may be ten times easier tomorrow. If the "easy" path makes me happy one day, the other path may make me even more happy in the days to come. I guess only time with tell and plans will work out exactly as they are intended to: as planned or possibly even better than planned.