39 - You Remind Me of all the Best in the World

Just spent the day with the world's most amazing 13-year old. We got ice cream, rode a virtual roller coaster, bought pencils, and ate McDonalds. It was a thoroughly satisfying afternoon.

I first met this young spitfire at after church lunch two years ago. "Hi," she said. "Want to hear my life plan?" and she proceeded to lay out her goals and dreams for the next 40 years of her life. Today at our church lunch, she mentioned that she'd added a new dimension to her life picture. "I've even planned when I'm going to die." she said. "84" "What, 2084?" someone asked. "No, WHEN I'm 84." she corrected him. Obviously.

I took her out on a downtown date this afternoon in celebration of her first day of high school, which happens next Monday. We hopped on a bus after church, chatting about school and her love of horses, and life in general. "I'm nervous," she said. "Because the first step in my plan starts this year. High school leads to college, and I'll have to get into a good college if I want my plan to work. If I mess up in high school, I won't get into a good college and then my everything might fall apart."

"Take it easy," I want to tell her. "You're not going to college today."

She walks with her head forward and her shoulders hunched, intent on getting where she's going... right now. She so reminds me of me at that age, only more aware, more courageous, and more willing to find answers.

As wise people have told me, I keep telling her: "All we have is these 24 hours. That's all God gives us." Plan for the future, but live in the present, knowing that things can change in an instant.

Every time I tell her, I tell myself.

87- The best laid schemes...

I can't help but think about the future at this stage of my life. I think it's only natural. On the cusp of possibly the second greatest transition period of my life (the time directly after graduating from college being the first) I find myself casting forward for all possible iterations of my life after returning to the States.

As my best friend from college once remarked in the May of our senior year, "I've never been less certain of where I'll end up three months from now." and now I find myself in that place once again. I have plans (loosely laid, of course) dreams, visions, secret hopes and desires. All I can know for sure at this stage of the game ...is that I can't know anything for sure at this stage of the game. And I am learning to be OK with that.

"To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough"

Robert Burns.

Small, crafty, cowering, timorous little beast,

O, what a panic is in your little breast!

You need not start away so hasty

With hurrying scamper!

I would be loath to run and chase you,

With murdering plough-staff.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion

Has broken Nature's social union,

And justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth born companion

And fellow mortal!

I doubt not, sometimes, but you may steal;

What then? Poor little beast, you must live!

An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves

Is a small request;

I will get a blessing with what is left,

And never miss it.

Your small house, too, in ruin!

Its feeble walls the winds are scattering!

And nothing now, to build a new one,

Of coarse grass green!

And bleak December's winds coming,

Both bitter and keen!

You saw the fields laid bare and wasted,

And weary winter coming fast,

And cozy here, beneath the blast,

You thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel plough past

Out through your cell.

That small bit heap of leaves and stubble,

Has cost you many a weary nibble!

Now you are turned out, for all your trouble,

Without house or holding,

To endure the winter's sleety dribble,

And hoar-frost cold.

But little Mouse, you are not alone,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes of mice and men

Go often askew,

And leave us nothing but grief and pain,

For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!

The present only touches you:

But oh! I backward cast my eye,

On prospects dreary!

And forward, though I cannot see,

I guess and fear!