On the ninth day, he planned again, reworking original notions, adapting to the inevitably unforeseen, just as if he could more clearly foresee now.

On the tenth day, he planned again, and likewise on the eleventh and the twelfth and forward to this day. While he was focused upon planning, the rest of his life proceeded without the benefit or the many encumbrances of any plan, without a guiding leader’s hand, and, utterly unplanned, somehow commanded success. The woman who would become his wife seemed to just cross his path. An unplanned love emerged. Offspring, too, determined their own gender and manifested their own personalities and tastes, none relying upon anyone’s plan.

Days and many nights, and way too many weekends, man toiled at his planning, fine-tuning estimates, reprojecting convergences, and renegotiating contract provisions while his life hummed along. He never once noticed the fundamental contradiction until after his wife had left him. That, too, was completely off the planning chart, but the man found ample distraction in his planning. For a while. Later, he wondered where those years had gone.

He had bartered them for magic beans to live in a future filled with promises which could never be fulfilled. He had woven shroud cloth with his time, and his purpose had been to improve the efficiency and quality and lower the cost of that cloth. And in time, he wore it well.

On the day after the day after tomorrow, man stopped planning.

©2013 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: Living, Working, Writing