Plan B

I recently saw an ad for an emergency contraceptive pill, Plan B, whose tagline read “because the unexpected happens.” Nice work pharmaceuticals – here is a simple solution to fix your “oops” from the night before. How convenient, I thought; if only all of life’s unwanted problems could be so easily resolved. I plan events for a living so it’s my job to be prepared with a contingency plan. What if the flight’s delayed? What if the A/V doesn’t work? What if the package gets lost? What will I have to resort to?

Life is full of the unexpected, with its mixed doses of pleasant and horrid surprises. But we plan anyway. We plan in the hopes that we can live our lives on our terms. We dream in the hopes of seeing them come to life. We plan, we dream, we hope… until destiny gets in the way. Just as a single night of passion can change the lives of two people, a single disease can shake the lives of countless.

After months of fighting a downhill battle, my uncle’s body eventually caved in to cancer. Neither doctors nor prayers could cure him, and so he slipped away from here to there. It served as a wake up call, and reminded me that when it comes to losing someone to a greater power, there is no plan B because it’s all part of a bigger plan. As we tiptoe around these cracks in plans, we’re so caught up looking down, that we forget to just live and let things be.