Open Writing

Part I – On the Futility of Life-Planning

I have a tale to tell. It is not a tale of heroic deeds or high adventure. It plumbs no depths of profundity, scales no dramatic heights, and will require of its reader no handy box of Kleenex with which to wipe away tears, either of mirth or misery. No, my friend, it’s a mundane tale of ordinary people doing things that fall some way short of the extraordinary.

It is distinguished, if that isn’t too strong a word, only by its overriding concern with the Fickle Finger of Fate, a finger which usually just prods at our lives every now and then, but sometimes, without rhyme or reason, makes a football out of some unsuspecting victim, then exercises all the dribbling skills of a Stanley Matthews. If at times during the telling of this tale I start to remind you of Marvin the Paranoid Android (“Life? Don’t talk to me about life . . .”), please rest assured that this is entirely justified – then again, don’t shoot me; I’m only the messenger.

By way of an argument – and I use this term in its proper, literary sense – let’s consider a question. Even this is mundane for, at one time or another, we’ve all been asked something on the lines of, “What do you think you’ll be doing ten years from now?” It’s one of those convenience questions – like “Lovely/Awful weather we’ve been having, don’t you think?” – that we all keep handy to bolster a flagging conversation, or even to start a flagging conversation. As such, this question invites no more than some passing, idle speculation. However, what if we decide to take the question seriously? In that case, rather obviously, the answer depends on what sort of person you are.

At one extreme, you might be one of those “Life Planners” who beaver away, meticulously setting goals, defining projects and tasks, scheduling targets and monitoring progress. Personally, I’ve never had much time for this approach to life. It smacks of that so-called performance management malarkey, beloved of “human resources managers” in general, but be-hated of yours truly in particular.

At work, I was getting to the point where managing my performance was taking up far more time than actually performing. Moreover, I gradually became aware that performance management was being used not so much as a management tool but more as a knife (back, stabbing in, for the use of). Thankfully, this increasingly ridiculous state of affairs was well and truly knocked on the head by the liberal application of a dose of early retirement.

Not surprisingly, then, doing the same with my life just didn’t bear thinking about, even if I – rather than some corrupt, vindictive or merely stupid member of middle management – was in the driving seat. After all, I reasoned, no matter how well-laid my plans might be, they can all be scuppered in an instant by the impact of some utterly unplanned, rampaging, scarlet-painted, big six-wheeler, 97 horse-power omnibus. Somehow, I didn’t relish the prospect of my famous last words being, “Oh. I wish I’d spent much less time planning my life, and a lot more time actually living it.”

At the other extreme, you might live your life as a leaf in the wind or, as Hildegard apparently had it, “a Feather on the Breath of God”. To be sure, this approach requires at most only a minimal project plan, and thus maximises the time available for profound philosophical contemplation of Nature, preferably through the bottom of a beer-glass. Nevertheless, it must be said, there are risks, some of which might even be considered unacceptable. As I see it, probably the biggest risk is that, following a chance encounter with a certain omnibus, as my lights go out I might just have time to muse, “Oh. I wish I’d spent more time learning my Green Cross Code.”

It goes without saying that most of us, myself included, tread somewhere in the middle ground. Not that it matters one whit which ground we tread – Life is like a rug, prone to being pulled out, from under the feet of both careful and casual alike, by the utterly unexpected hand of “Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi”. Right, then, to get back to that question: if you’d put it to me ten years or so ago, and assuming that I didn’t opt for idle speculation, what would have been my reply?

Well, there’s a short poem that I came across as a university student, over 40 years back. I never did learn the name of the author but, at a single hearing, the words took root deep in my mind – and believe me, with my colander-like memory, that’s no mean feat!

“Gi’e me a bi’ o’ Yorksher fayre,
A Yorksher scene an’ Yorkshire air,
Whear t’ lads a’ bold an’ t’ lasses fair,
An’ Ah’m contented.

The’s no’ another place in t’ land
A fair comparison c’n stand.
T’ spend t’ rest o’ mi life Ah’ve planned
‘Mid t’ Yorksher Dales an’ t’ mount’ns grand –
Unless prevented.”

Feigning an uncommon fit of immodesty, I’d be inclined to say, “I couldn’t have put it better myself”. As replies go, that one knocks the nail right on the head. Putting it rather more prosaically, this particular Yorkshireman had every intention of retiring, gracefully or otherwise, at the age of 60 (or thereabouts), and seeing out his days in serene contemplation of the limitless wonders of God’s Own County.

By the same token, the diametrically-opposed notion – that instead “Me and the Missus” would up sticks, abandon our beloved Yorkshire forever, and go to live as far away as we could possibly get without actually leaving the planet – never entered my head. Of course not. In fact, if anyone had suggested it, even in jest, I’d have called him barmy, and might even have clocked him one, just to show that I wasn’t kidding. Yet, dammit, this is precisely what HAS happened, and that’s why this is “A Tale of the Unexpected” and, apparently, I am the one who’s a right proper barm-pot.