Do I look like the kind of person with a plan?

Plans sound like great things to do when you are a Business/Marketing/Management student. They tell you, failing to plan is planning to fail. But have we asked on what yardstick are they measuring failure?

The symptoms of why we're so fucked now in our world is because we have not evolved - we think with all our technology and cleverness and knowledge explosion, we have become pedigreed versions of the human race. But pedigree or not, the shit stinks the same. We're accelerating and burning rubber with no brakes and no sensibility in direction. We're headed for a crash.

Just because we've evolved technologically doesn't really make us smarter, better. And that's where the problem is - we think we're smarter and better, and so we deserve MORE, more and MORE of this and that and everything else. We consider ourselves civilised and advanced when only one side of our humanity progressed - the technological side. The spiritual side has been relegated to less than a sideshow; the scientific community, which is essentially on the payroll of Businesses and corporations, has reduced the place of spirituality to that of a freakshow.

The cleverness in us grows and multiplies while our intelligence is diminished. Is that what we call, progress?

Plans and more plans is the vocabulary of the insatiable world of business. There are always plans. Even wanting to do good needs a plan. We're so used to the idea of having plans and ideas that we have reduced ourselves to machines that can only operate within the scope of an operating manual - the Plan.

When asked by '2-face' maverick DA what his plan was, the Joker replied, "Do I look like a guy with a plan?" Do you see from this, the virtue of someone without a plan? It is someone who does something for the sake of doing it, not really because it is part of a process or a plan for something else, some bigger pay-off or benefit. When a person has an ability to do something for the sake of doing it and for the mere purpose of believing in what they are doing, the intensity of the creative power to achieve something is incredible. That is the power of not having a plan. It frees you from the crippling fear that projected expectations tends to weigh down on you. To have a plan means to operate within a fixed context - sterile ground for the quantum power of creativity.

A person without a plan is a person who has not set themselves up for something they will potentially lose. They are free from the fear of failing and free from the judgment they face from themselves and others from 'not fulfilling the plan'. The person without a plan simple "is", simply "to be" and allows themselves to be carried by the creative energy within, riding the state of flux we are all in. Perhaps that's what Eckart Tolle means in his "The Power of Now" - to be able to do something for the sake of doing it and not as a pre-emptive measure or projected gain.

I am a person with many plans, and thankfully, 99 out of a 100 fail because I never see to them. It makes me feel like a failure; a clever and talented person with so much potential and never being able to realize them. But that's only because I had a projected expectation of the material rewards of the 99 other plans. I say thankfully because the proliferation of my other 99 plans spins around me a web of material, tangible benefits which cocoons me from the more important thing I'm after - ethereal realia. I'll keep my mind the way it is - a mind that is able to generate 100 ideas, instead of a mind that is dulled by the material pursuits of the 99 plans.

Having plans really holds me back from what I can really be. Plans for holidays and trips. Saving plans, insurance plans, investments plans. All those keep me present in the future or anywhere else except now. All those things rob me of the ability to enjoy the intensity of the living, present moment. Mortgage plans keep me rooted in my commuting routes, or worse, in a particular neighborhood. Planning to pay off a car keeps me anxious about being able to make repayments. Planning for Thea's education makes me anxious about whether what she's doing now will be able to provide for that future 'education'. Planning for my own further education invalidates the everyday learning I'm doing and makes me think that I am incapable of discovering the knowledge and experiences an undergraduate/graduate programme will provide.

The idea that we cannot live our life without a plan is a product of the traditions and conditioning we're accustomed to. The idea was once an idea of some other authority. When people stick to plans, the masses become more predictable. It makes the jobs of social analysts and psychologists much easier when humans feel falsely secure in routines and patterns. It makes them easier to sell to - it makes it easier to figure out how to cream that 'mindshare' we have. Brillian, actually. But is that all you are? A commodity that helps big businesses and corporations grow and profit materially? Isn't the destruction of intelligence and creativity and our own humanity a price too high to pay for this social experiment?

When watching movies like I-robot and Eagle Eye, it reminds one that there is something computers (and clever analysts and psychologists who key in data to these computers) cannot extrapolate, plot and predict : the human element. The unpredictability of the human makes them human. People always say I am unpredictable; like that is a really bad thing. It is a really bad thing; because it is that one anomaly that really breaks the pattern, whatever pattern you've been working hard to build. But to be unpredictable, to not be a pattern or an anti-pattern, to not conform, is to be Free. And to be free is to be fresh. To be controlled and regulated is to become dull and mechanical. That is not being human.

I planned to go back 3 hours ago...and I also planned to do a lot of other things. The best things in my life happened without a definite, clear plan. In place of a plan, I had a dream. And when my dreams come true, I'd like to say it as if I had known all along, "My plan worked!". - The Halo Effect :)