On Being Prepared
While not exactly a continuation of the last blog, this one does take-up one of it’s themes — my need to be prepared. If you haven’t already done so, you may want to return to the story of my Epic Wardrobe Struggles and start there before reading the current blog.
On the tail end of my vacation, I started considering one of the key drivers behind my packing stresses — my need to feel like I am prepared. This is a core personality trait for me, an issue that I struggle with and see come up over and over in my life and practice. It dawned on me I might want to dig-up an ole’ dhamma tool — The Matrix — and see what happens if I apply it to being prepared/planning ahead and encountering good or bad outcome. I.E a matrix would be prepared = good outcome/ prepared = bad outcome/ not prepared = good outcome/ not prepared = bad outcome.
Note: I will not be drawing out the full matrix for this blog, but simply highlighting and listing evidence for the sides I struggle to believe. If you need a refresher on the whole matrix tool, please see this blog here.
I already believe no preparation =bad outcome and preparation = good outcome, so I won’t belabor these points. I have also spent lots of time considering how I can prepare and still get a bad outcome; for example I planned extensively for my trip to Africa and still got run down by a rhino. But I recognize my glaring weakness in view is that I simply can’t believe there are circumstances where no preparation can = good outcome.
In fact, not only do I discount evidence that buttresses this possibility, I get down right ticked off when I see it. For example, I had a friend who was super lax with her birth control and she never did get pregnant. It made me so angry –I felt like she ‘deserved’ to get pregnant because she didn’t take precautions to prevent it. In my world view preparation is key to success -always. Even if you prepare as much as you can and stuff turns out badly, at least you did your best. But if you don’t prepare well than you totally deserve to get screwed, that is an Alana rule of the world. This is the reason I shop for trips obsessively, or why Eric and I keep working and saving though we already have so much; planning may not equal a good outcome, but I can’t believe a good outcome happens without planning.
So, lets consider a bit of evidence to help fill-in this quadrant of the matrix: No Prep = Good Outcomes
- When my old employee left my organization I got called to help again and ultimately took my job back. I had trained up this employee to replace me, I had planed she would stay, but precisely because things went differently than I had planed I was able to regain a position I enjoy.
- When Eric and I started dating I had no plans for along-term relationship, I thought it would be a short summer affair. Turns out we have been happily married for over a decade
- I had brought powder sunscreen on my trip to Africa and it was insufficient, I was burning everyday. Out of nowhere another couple, on their last day of vacation, gave me their high SPF cream and I was able to avoid getting badly burnt.
- My stepdad had no plans for a check-up, but after an accident he had an MRI and it caught lung cancer at an early, operative, stage.
Ugh, I can list these till the cows come home, but the more I think, the more I realize I have 2 big issues:
1) I need way more evidence that not prepared/not doing the steps I think are right to get what I want can in fact equal a good outcome.
2) That doing being prepared/taking the steps I think are right to get to what I want can in fact sometimes equal a bad outcome. i.e. preparation isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, like everything it has 2 sides –there is a risk.
I can’t let go of hope, I can’t let go of my ‘protective actions’, till I see for sure that sometimes not having/doing them leads to a better outcome than if I had. Or, scarier still, that I can get a negative outcome precisely as a result of the steps I took to get what I want (like buying a house in NY to prepare for a new exciting NY life, and then having a piece of property I hated and couldn’t get rid of). But it happens, I just need more evidence …
Zooming Out: A recent (Sept 2021) perspective on this topic:
A few weeks ago, years after this original contemplation, I was talking to Eric about him quitting his job. He hates it, they are abusive, but one of the reasons he stays is to make sure he has enough money to maintain a lifestyle that is desirable for me. I told him I appreciate it, but that I don’t want to be a spur in his side –kicking him to further endure a job he hates –just so I have a bit more financial security in my life. It isn’t worth it to me to have the consequences of that, especially when we don’t know the future, we may already have more than we ever get to spend.
Eric thanked me for the sentiment, and then said something that really struck me. He said, ” it is easy for you to give up the money at the point of acquisition, but not at the point of spend. I believe that you already know that there may never be circumstances that we need more than what we have. What I worry about is if we encounter circumstances where we don’t have what you would need to feel safe and comfortable, then how will you react?” In other words, it is fine for you to admit you may prepare and then have stuff turn out different than you prepared for, but if you didn’t prepare at all and you encounter situations you feel you would have been ok in had you just prepared, you are going to be all sorts of shook-up Alana.
This really got me to start thinking more on this topic of being prepared. The problem is, I am always zoomed-in. I worry about having enough resources to take one problem at a time; enough money to weather a pandemic, enough nutrition and medical care and strength of body to weather an illness. I worry about each moments’ arrangement being comfortable and satisfactory. I realized that in each individual circumstance, there is usually something I can bring to the table that would help make me prepared, that could influence an outcome to be as I want it to be. Maybe it is money, skill, influence, knowledge, strength, relationships; each circumstance is different, but there is always some mix I believe that, if I only had, I could effectuate the outcome I want.
When a circumstance fails to yield the outcome I desire, I study it, try and determine what I need more of, so that next time the exact same circumstances arise (which is always a myth because the exact same NEVER arises) I am prepared. Lifetimes of mine have been spent in this process –failing, gathering and preparing in the hopes of succeeding next time. Or succeeding and gathering even more of what I think made me successful so that next time I persevere yet again. When you look at the world as a case-by-case set of circumstances, this approach sorta works. I mean it is long, laborious, fraught with work and peril, but it does workish: After all, each effect arises based on causes and we can be a factor that influences the causes that bring about certain effects.
But the truth is I can’t have enough forever. Resources diminish, situations change, and what works for one fails in the next. What is more is that if I zoom out it is clear that if I get past one obstruction I will just meet the next. Like a video game, if I finally get enough skill, life points, strength and tools, to get past that baddie I have been stuck on for weeks, I just have to face a new badder-baddie right afterwards. Only unlike a video game, real life goes on forever…
Zoom out and I can see birth, age, sickness and death are the mile markers of this life, with suffering all on the road. I myopically fixated on minute-by-minute ‘preparation and outcomes’ and loose sight of the bigger truth. And so on and on and on I play, worrying about tackling obstacles instead of admitting there is no winning and I am better off trying to exit the game.
