Dreams, Plans, or Worries?

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"What are your plans for Summer break? Christmas Break? Spring? Easter?"

"What are you doing today? What are you doing tomorrow? Next week? Next year?"

I have always loved the idea of planning. Whether it was using a planner for homework or deciding on what my vacation plans were, I was always that one person planning ahead. Now, don't get me wrong, to plan is a wonderful thing to do. As a little kid in elementary student, I started learning how to plan when I was given my own little agenda to write my homework in.

Now that I am older and in college, I start to wonder, "What does it mean to plan something?" When I googled the definition of the word "plan," the following definition popped up: to decide on and arrange in advance.

At this point, you are probably either hopelessly confused about why I am talking about planning...or you have already clicked out of this little post. If you have decided to stay, then I won't continue to bore you with a long or wordy post about planning because what does the title or the word "over-planner" have to do with anything and...

Nevermind. Let's continue.

I'm not going to lie. This past week has been filled with nothing but anxiety. As finals begin to approach, planning has become something that seems like second-nature to me. From Summer planning to figuring out what I will do when I finally graduate from college, planning has seemed to consume me. For the past few weeks, I have cried or called my parents about something that hadn't even happened yet. As I googled, researched, and thought for many hours about these future plans, I started to think, "am I dreaming, planning, or worrying?"

For a while I justified my near insanity because I was constantly thinking about the future. I thought I was dreaming. At first, it started as dreaming. My thoughts consisted of goals I had for my life and different adventures I would like to have one day. Being the planner that I am, this dreaming soon turned into planning. For the past few months, I would think about how I could accomplish these dreams. Nothing wrong with that right? Right...until stress started to creep in. My innocent dreaming turned into rigorous planning, which eventually turned into stressing about what I needed to do, how much time I had to do it, and wondering if I had already missed any chance of a happy life.

Now, you may be thinking: isn't this all a little too much? My reply is, yes. It is all too much, but we all do it as some point in our lives. Whether it is during junior year of high school, senior year of college, or even during what we believe is called the "mid-life crisis." We try to plan our whole lives and then worry if the best times are already behind us. We compare our lives with others' and worry whether we can get to the destination that we are supposed to end at by the end of our lives. We tend to have the mind set of, "if I am not on the right path, I won't end up at the right destination." Fortunately, this is completely wrong. Let me explain.

For example, if you and I want to get to, let's say, New York City, I will take a different route to get there depending on where I am right now. If it is meant to be, we will both end up at our planned destinations, but our paths will be different. Just because you have to go on a different path, doesn't mean that you will end up at a different destination. Of course, we wouldn't have thought about New York if we didn't have a dream. We also, wouldn't be able to get to New York City smoothly if we didn't have a plan. This comes to show that dreaming and planning are necessary...worrying is not. When we worry, we forget the simple things. We forget to trust God in every situation. We forget to live in the moment that we are in. We forget to enjoy life for what it is.

In conclusion, we will get to our final destination. Where we end up, is based on how big we are willing to dream. How we get there is based on how well we plan. Whether we will enjoy the journey is based on whether we worry as we travel to where fate will lead us in the end.

*Photo: "See Me as I Am" Model: Parks Elaine

Photo Credits: Naudica Heath