Unexpected doesn't mean not planned for...

I was once very proud of my five year plans - trying to convince the younger generation that they should constantly prepare for the rest of their lives by planning things to accomplish in the next five years. I know, you think I stole that from the Great Leaps Forward of the Communists, but I didn't. Anyway, looking forward for the Zombie Apocalypse or the complete collapse of the Republican Party and Capitalism or a world without love or energy or something. What are you prepared to adapt to and overcome? Okay, keep it simple - you get a job, you want a better job, you start paying the bills and you pay yourself first - making automatic savings a part of your life.... a whole bunch of good to great things you can plan for and work towards and have something five years down the road. Or, don't plan, and hope to win the Lotto or that only good things happen to most people.

Now, today, I woke to ice on the windshield, and missed my scraper - found a substitute - went to church and then I went and saw RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) and enjoyed the entire movie but it added to my thinking about the what if, that the Pastor had started with his deciding that he was going up in the Rapture - were we coming?

You can really, once reach adult thinking, plan a life for forty or fifty years - with tweaks along the way - marriage, schools, careers, changes in marriage, children, schools, careers, mouths to feed. My mother was looking forward to her fiftieth wedding anniversary - to the point that she might have missed other things going on around her, but that was a constant point of reference. As I thought about the movie and the sermon and the life of Earl - I remembered the Bucket List - another movie, about what is important to get done, see, visit and experience before one DIES. So I should be planning by listing those things that are a must if I only have a year to go. Shouldn't I? If you get more, at least during that year you will have done those things that you think you should have. If you only have two years left, what do you need to do, five years? Kind of like, okay, you are retired and have time of your own but what is important to get done, in case you don't want to die never having done...... whatever that secret desire was.