Plan B Is NOT Defeat

It’s the older wiser sibling of Plan A

Uggh. Who wants older and wiser when you’ve got younger and full of passionate, bold, cowgirl-style let’s do this thing energy?

Who doesn’t want Plan A to work? I mean it is The Master Plan. The best plan– the plan that most fully expresses your heart’s truest desire.

The plan with the highest octane to fuel your future.

The thing of it is, there are a staggering amount of caveats and clauses and addendums that shift the irreversible ultimate good of Plan A from fact into fiction.

At least, this is the case, in the wild west of my personal existence.

This problem with ‘caveats’ is they get in the way of absolute truth.

They get in the way of a bunch of other things too, like personal genius, edge of your seat epiphanies and transformational revelations.

Most unnervingly they mess with a sense of certainty.

Unfortunately, the more certain I am that I’m right, the less likely it’s true.

Especially if I am certain WITH a heaping side of immediate need to act on my decision. This is almost always a huge glaring neon warning sign that there is something ELSE going on, which I am NOT looking at.

However, I NEVER let this insight get in the way of my Plan A.

I’d blindfold myself if necessary NOT to have to address the personal cracks and flaws that might make my glorious golden Plan A irrelevant or worse, obsolete.

What kind of knucklehead would ever let anything get in the way of Plan A?

Not me. Every couple years I begin trolling realtor.com in search of my other, better life.

The one in which I will moonlight as an organic farmer and develop a deep, abiding desire to care for chickens and collect fresh eggs for the delicious home-made breakfast I will whip up every morning instead of protein cereal with fruit.

This is Plan A: To move to a new house, new town, new me.

Here, in this new location, I will not feel poorly for my lack of social party-girl desires because the remote areas I have sought with acres of property, free me from that kind of pressure.

I will NOT be so impatient and stressed out because I will have ROOM to be. SPACE to feel FREE.

In this new, more physically, spiritually, psychologically balanced life I will finally become a brilliant pianist and release my inner landscape artist.

The only problem is I am not terribly artistic, musical or balanced.

BUT, I will NOT let that get in the way of my dream Plan A.

The old adage, no matter where you go, there you are, runs through my head. But, I counter: Where you are very definitely impacts how you feel which contributes heavily to how free you feel to be your best self.

So, I blow that off.

Luckily this “Move to a New House, New Town, New Me” Plan A, which I seem to revisit every two to three years requires a LOT of effort.

Many stars need to align.

Some of them do. We find a new town with great ranked schools, lots of acres and a beautiful house. We drive around. A lot. We are quiet.

We don’t really love the town. It doesn’t have the open, light, bright feeling of where we are. It doesn’t have the water or the main street or the feeling of camaraderie.

The properties are all really far apart.

But isn’t that what we wanted?

The schools may be ranked high but they don’t look very inviting. But isn’t ranking more important?

We don’t have a quick answer for that one.

And, upon further consideration, we realize the schools are not ranked according to the level of teachers or teaching but the scores of the students.

Our town has a very diverse student body, which is why we love it.

Many of the families have bigger problems to worry about than academic performance.

And if my test scores had been entered I would have lowered the average several points. Testing is the measure of one very limited kind of intelligennce.

What does ranking mean anyway? Really mean? The kids are smarter?

How? Emotionally intelligent? Resiliently resourceful? Innovative advocates of change? Courageous adventurers?

I don’t know. Ranking sways dangerously close to privilege.

And privilege cuts more than one way. 

I went to Greenwich Academy. Then Northwestern. Was admitted into the highly competitive Poetry Program, pledged Kappa and couldn’t have felt more…

Fat, unattractive, stupid, talentedless, insecure..

AND guilty because I’d had the privilege of attending highly ranked schools and getting into highly revered progrmasbeen given the best.

With all that aren’t you supposed to be on top of the world.

I was so relieved to graduate, move to Chicago and be surrounded by all kinds of people from all walks of life– to finally “get” that the top of the top of the top is actually someone else’ s bottom.

AND, there are a million different tops.

Academic is just one.

Plus, there are plenty of reasons why public is better than private and vice versa. Why homogenous, high testing public is better than diverse mid-testing public and vice versa.

In the end, beyond ego, image and social status whether in defense of one kind of education or another, it boils down to one thing.

Feeling at home.

In your house, your town, your school– yes.

But way more importantly, inside yourself. To feel at home inside yourself. This is the alpha and omega so far as I can tell.

Without it, the greatest education, property, town, friends, success and money in the world will leave you flat.

Not even great health and love can save you, if you feel untethered inside.

I seek to change my outside situation when I feel lost inside.

I feel lost inside when I have stopped embracing who I am, because I think I should be someone else.

This ungrounded, detached feeling leaves me anxious and wanting to make a change. I feel stuck, stagnant, trapped, claustrophobic, oppressed and like I very well may suffocate if I don’t move in a new direction, pull together Plan A.

Luckily, Plan A never seems to pan out. And I am stuck with Plan B.

Plan B is not quite so simple as remembering how to feel at home again inside or not getting caught up in my the maelstrom of not good enough.

Because I and you and home are constantly evolving– never the same twice.To think you can go back is to dishonor the ever-changing greatness that is you.

The trick is not to try but to explore.

The harder I try to understood, accept and embrace myself usually the more frustrated, impatient and irritated I end up.

BUT, if I simply go explore, see what pulls me toward it, see what continues to play back in my mind, see what makes me want to stop and pay attention– I encounter this new me.

And sure enough, new me is in a new house in a new town. Because everything looks different inside this place.

There is room and space and wonder.