On Thursday evening, out of nowhere, the idea of spending New Year’s Eve in an exotic place, where I have never been before, came to me. I asked a friend from the agency on Friday morning to look for some offers for me, and she asked me annoyedly: “You know, New Year’s Eve is the day after tomorrow. Why didn’t you think about it in advance like I do, looking for offers half a year before?” I told her that I don’t really make plans when it comes to vacations and, in general, I act according to what I feel at the moment, I don’t make decisions for the next year, when a lot of things can change. She found a deal for Zanzibar at a very good price compared to the rest of the year’s deals. I read about what interested me about that destination and I realized that I would have liked to visit those places. But I remembered that, at the beginning of the year, I have to deal with certain matters that I could not have anticipated and that requires effort and time. So I postponed the departure for the future, maybe next year. If those matters that I had to deal with had not come up, I would have done my best to go on vacation. I would have gotten the money if it was necessary, I would have prepared everything to enjoy the vacation. If I had bought my holiday six months in advance, I would have put pressure on myself to complete the problems I have to solve, which would have brought me frustration and tension.I was left with my friend’s bewilderment about the untimely decision to spend New Year’s Eve in an exotic place. Many make plans ahead of time to make sure everything will be fine. We need plans that put order in our lives, as if life were a drawer with things that need to be arranged only as we want, not a flow of a stream that we are part of. That shows us every moment that we can live something great if we let go of the order and projections made for the future, attentive to what we see around us, to the possibilities that appear along the way that our minds cannot anticipate.
Not making long-term plans gives me the feeling of freedom, not having too many expectations that make it difficult, being attentive to what life throws my way and trying to adapt my own desires to the flow of life, to adapt to the situations that arise along the way, being convinced that everything resolves itself in a divine way if we trust in the divine will, if we do not put too much pressure on what is happening and if we do not have too many expectations that we have mentally projected, because the heart doesn’t make plans, it just lives in the present moment.
Even in married life, not paying attention to the present, putting pressure and always having expectations, because at the beginning of the relationship we made certain projections that often turn out to be unattainable and ineffective along the way, turns the relationship into a prison where love cannot fit, where boredom appears because all we see is that projection we formed at the beginning, unable to truly abandon ourselves to life and thus living moments that our mind cannot anticipate. I remember a line from a movie I saw recently where the man tells the woman he loved that he wants to be with her, to do many things together, and to her question “What kind of things?”, he simply answers: “Anything.”
Therefore, the idea is that if we really want to do a certain thing or have someone in our life for real, after we have carefully weighed the currently identified opportunities, things will come naturally and all we have to do is we let ourselves be carried away by the magic of life that can take us far, when we let it be.
If we make so many plans about a seven-night trip, how many plans do we make when it comes to a profession or a marriage, weighing the situation so much, making so many plans and having so many expectations, that the experience in itself it becomes a constant rush to fulfill them or to ask the other to fulfill them, instead of enjoying every moment, being aware that the choice made is the best of so many other options and thus focusing on what we have, not on what we had or could have, not letting the experience or the relationship itself be, not letting the present be and not really valuing it.
31.12.2023
