Life, According to plan B.
Or C, or D, or X, Y, Z.
Something interesting happened to me this week. I wrote a post here on medium.com, called Why I still wish I worked at Medium, that I didn’t share on my usual social media channels, that I made little effort to promote, but that has gathered, over the past few days, the most reads, recommends and shares that I’ve had on a story, yet.
In the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about why this post resonates, and what I meant in writing it.
I realized that in large part, what I meant to reflect on is that my life simply hasn’t gone according to plan. My longing to work at Medium, despite my outright recognition that I neither have the relevant skill set nor the desire to do the actual work required, speaks more to the longing to be part of something bigger than myself than to actual dissapointment. I want to feel like my work matters. I think a lot of people feel this way.
Working for a great company that builds a great product seems like a satisfying way to feel important, needed, and valued. The first question we ask each other upon meeting is usually a variation of, “Who are you and what do you do for a living?” Holding a position at a technology company like Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Medium would serve as a kind of passport of credential, of status and social stature.
Underneath the longing for status is a terrible dual fear: the fear of being ordinary, and the fear of failure.
The likes, recommends and shares tell me that something I said landed with people, and perhaps my guess why is completely wrong or off-base, but I suspect that even so, these are common fears. So I’m here again in the middle of the night to tell you this:
You are not a failure if your life hasn’t gone according to plan.
You are not a failure if you don’t work in a prestigious position, if you are not in a place of power, if you are lonely, sick, damaged, or afraid. You are not a failure if your marriage fell apart, if you didn’t finish that college degree, if you haven’t quit smoking yet, if you never wrote a novel or sang on a stage or had a million dollars in your bank account.
It’s easy to look at someone else’s life, and think that they have done everything right. So many books feed us this story: find your purpose, live your calling, pursue your passions, live your dreams, be all that you can be.
You didn’t get to plan when you were born, and I hope like anything that you won’t get to plan when you’ll die. Most of us don’t. You didn’t choose your parents, your place of birth, your skin color, your native language, your class, your genes, or your playing cards.
You can still choose your own adventure, and I hope that you will. Even so, so much is outside of your control.
I think most of us are totally unprepared for that moment when everything falls apart, when we don’t have a plan, when we aren’t sure we did the right thing, or worse, when we know we did the wrong thing.
But if you find yourself somewhere in plan B, living an ordinary life when you hoped to be extraordinary, the game isn’t over. If you find yourself in the middle of an affair, or fired from a job, or in a pair of handcuffs, or in the waiting room at the mental health clinic, or alone on a couch in the middle of the night halfway through a cardboard container of rocky road ice cream with tears pouring down your face, you are still not a failure.
Sometimes, people do things right. They live by plan A. They get born at the right time, to the right parents, meet the right people, get the right genes, earn the right grades, win the big trophies, marry the right spouses, retire at age 30, write bestsellers, work at the most interesting jobs, make the grandest discoveries. You can do one or more of those things, and still not be a success.
I don’t think that a life lived according to plan is the best measure of a good life. I’m wary of simple answers to complicated questions. What I think matters most is what you do when the plan falls apart, and you find yourself an ordinary person living an ordinary life, full of mistakes, misunderstandings, wrong turns, and regrets.
I believe that in those moments, the true opportunity arrives: the real extraordinary lies in stepping outside of what you know and believe, away from your expectations and your ideologies, and in doing so without judgement or shame.
The real story is in the meaning we make of the stories. Ordinary is much closer to extraordinary than I ever would have believed, when I was still living according to plan A.
Plan B has been much less boring. I still want to do great things. I still want to be part of something bigger than myself. I still want to work at Medium, contrary to all logic and reason. But instead, I am choosing my own adventure, and learning to let go of my old plans.
