Keeping in step with my post from Monday (or trying to, anyway), I sat down last night to work on a five-year plan. If you've spent more than five minutes around me, you understand why this is preposterous from the outset: I don't do well planning the next five minutes of my life, let alone the next five years. But I said I was gonna, and my lack of drive brought me to waste almost the entire day yesterday, so I felt like I should at least take a crack at it.
It's hard to talk about a future you only hope to have. It seems so ridiculous. Who's to say where I'll be in five years? It's a long time and a lot can happen. I barely feel confident making plans for next week because you never really know what the weekend will be like, and I could suddenly need to make a huge correction or try to squeeze in some previously-unforeseen event, or I might get sick or die or have diarrhea or something. You never know, man. It could happen.
But on the other hand, I do it all the time. Future planning, I mean. Not have diarrhea. I talk about things I hope to have or do all the time, and if I don't talk about them, I'm at least usually thinking about them. I may disguise my hopes as "wants" just so that it doesn't sound like I'm gonna be disappointed if I'm denied certain things, but it doesn't change the fact that they're still hopes. I hope I get a new job and I don't want to live in an apartment forever. I hope to be married someday and have kids. I want to be healthy and happy and not have all these addictions in my life, hanging around my neck like rotten fish heads. And even though I don't attach a specific, five-year timetable to any of it, I still cast those things into my future with words like "someday" and "soon."
So what's the big deal about sticking a number on it? If five years really is so far away, why am I so reluctant to hope to have accomplished so many big things in that time? I think it's largely because if I start making plans to actually get or do these things, they stop being noble aspirations and start becoming tangible realities that I have to work toward. It's the difference between saying "Boy, it'd sure nice to be a millionaire by the time I'm 40" and saying "If I can generate/put away an average of $7,000 a month for the next twelve years, I'll have a million dollars in the bank." The first scenario allows a lot of room for "Golly-gee" wishful thinking. The second is an actual plan that requires you to do something.
So, in five years, where do I want to be? Well, I would like to be married in five years. I'll be 32, almost 33, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say that. And I want it to be a great marriage. I want it to be free from the chains of addiction and debt. I don't want to drag any boat anchors into my family and expect my wife to have to deal with it. I won't be able to say I never screwed up or that I don't have struggles, but I want to be able to say that I'm recovering and invite her along as a help-mate instead of stumbling along, waiting for her to save me. I won't say I'll necessarily want kids by then, but I want to be in a place where I'd be able to have them without wondering how I'm going to support them or keep them from turning out just like their deadbeat father. I'd like to own a house. At least, I'd like to be on track to own a house. Whether I'm working a Dave Ramsey-style plan to save up for a 100% cash purchase or building up a sizable down-payment, I want to be in process with that. I want to be self-employed, too. Well, maybe not totally, but at least working on getting there. I want to do something I love and have the freedom to set my own schedule and be productive on my own time without being at the mercy of someone else. If I'm working a part-time gig somewhere to keep affordable insurance for me and my family, I think I'd be alright with that. But I definitely want to have achieved some solid career goals by that point and be working toward other, larger ones.
Most of all, I want to have key ways in which I'm using all of this to serve other people. I don't just want to build a nice little pile of awesome so that I can keep it all to myself. I want to have a home so that I can invite other people into it. I want to have a great job with a flexible schedule so that I can give time and money to people who need it. I want a great marriage that models love and patience and servanthood to anybody who knows me and my wife and sees the way we interact. I want to be able to say that God has blessed me with all of this in order that he might bless others through it.
But maybe he won't. Maybe I do get sick or die tomorrow. Maybe it is foolish to lay out a plan for something you can't touch or see. But I'll tell you what I know to be true--I know for a fact what it's like to live without one. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the quickest way to a pointless life is to keep doing whatever you've been doing and don't ever make plans to change. Go out, have a few drinks, buy some crap you don't need with money you don't have and find someone you can tolerate to settle in with, and that's exactly what you'll be doing: settling. You'll end up old, fat, tired, and bored and you'll hate yourself for it.
I don't wanna go out like that. I want to go on big adventures where some crazy stuff goes down with people that my life is better for having in it and, when it's all behind me, I wanna be able to look back on everything that went on and see all the ways that God showed up in the middle of the mess as the most awesome thing that ever happened to me. And even if this were the last 'blog I ever wrote and you all had to bury me tomorrow, I could show you some really cool ways that it's already taken place.
Maybe this doesn't make much sense to you. Maybe I should spend some time writing about those instances in my life where God showed up and did something incredible. But the bigger question for me in all of this is, what's wrong with planning for that? What's wrong with saying that you want that to continue? Maybe it's not so much planning out a detailed road-map of where you're going and how you're going to get there. Maybe it's more about opening yourself up to the possibility of a future and handing over the keys. Maybe I'm not making some crazy-obsessive list of everything I want for myself and instead inviting God to change me and bless me in ways that I never thought were possible.
Regardless, would I rather waste away on potential unrealized or go down in flames swinging for the fences?
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