I have known people throughout the years who, from as far back as they can remember, have planned their lives with excruciating care, and with great success. They seem always to have known what they wanted in life: education, career, marriage, children, retirement . . . every detail clearly envisioned and plotted. And all along the way, for the most part things have worked out well for them.

My life, on the other hand, seems to have been more reactive than proactive, guided by the forces of chance: making decisions and choices based on current conditions or opportunities as they arose. And, as with most people, some of those choices have proven more fortuitous than others.

With the transition to yet another new year, I’ve been thinking back on some of my life choices, and how different things might have been if I had gone in some other direction. So — while it’s obviously too late to change things — I went searching for some words of wisdom to satisfy myself that I didn’t screw up too badly. And I found these two opposing, though equally defensible, points of view:

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
– Abraham Lincoln

. . . and . . .

“I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.”
– Albert Einstein

Wow! Two brilliant individuals: one with the confidence to believe he could be the master of his own fate; the other, more adventurous, with the courage to face whatever came his way. But which was more logical?

And then I found a third quote, from an American author of fantasy and science fiction, which struck me as the most reasonable of all:

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin

Which, I suppose, is what I’ve always done: worked hard, tried to make rational choices while still having as much fun as possible, and dealt with the ups and downs as they came my way.

And isn’t that what most of us do? The future, after all, is maddeningly unpredictable, and not always ours to control.

All things considered, I suppose I could have done better; but I could also have done a hell of a lot worse.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/2/26