"What are you planning to do for a living?"
"Where do you think you are going to live?"
"Do you think you will get married?"
"How many kids do you want to have?"
"Where do you see yourself in 10 years?"
"What are you doing tomorrow?"
Whenever somebody asks you a question similar to one listed above, you cringe and a little piece of you starts to freak out. (Well, maybe when asked the last question, you don't fret quite as much, but you get my point.) Whether your close friends are merely making conservation, your parents are trying to influence you, or your distant relatives are inquiring at holiday get-togethers, questions prodding about your future plans (like those deep, distant, big life event related questions that seem several lightyears away) seem exhausting to think about. That's because you're the girl who has yet to plan out her entire life.
While there are definitely moments when the answer "I don't know" does not sufficiently answer the inquiry or end the prodding conversation, as you had hoped, sometimes there is nothing more for you to add. Sometimes, you truly don't know what your next move is, and sometimes you don't even have an idea about what you want your next move to be. And that is perfectly OK.
You cannot perfectly plan out every second of your life. Even the big stuff like at what age you want to be married by, where you want to live for the remainder of your life, career locations (just a career in general), and when to start a family hold the potential to go awry and end up occurring very differently from how you planned originally. Thus, not having a life plan is actually way better than it sounds. At first, it may insinuate that you are unorganized and careless; however, not having a life plan and then accepting whatever happens as it occurs proves that you are adaptable to any situation and ready to learn from the experiences that you are faced with.
Moreover, by not planning out your entire life, you are decreasing the chance of experiencing immense disappointment. For example, if you have your heart set on a very detailed five-year plan that, none of which, truly lines up with the reality of those five years, then you will have to endure the difficulty of working through disappointment. Rather than wasting the time and energy of the present moment dwelling on the past moments that did not align with your plan, you can simply accept your life situation and work on maintaining full attention and awareness to what you are experiencing now. When reality and future plans do not coincide, it is fine to acknowledge that things did not go as planned, but then begin to move forward. Never let yourself get so caught up in what could have been that you forget to enjoy what is occurring right here, right now.
Goal-setting is a great thing to do and thinking about the future is impossible NOT to do; however, the major takeaway is to not let yourself fall into this trap assuming that you must have everything planned out perfectly. Afterall, those plans may or may not come to fruition; plus, it is more fun to just wait and see what life has to offer you. Additionally, there is no "right time" for certain life events to happen. Everything is different for everyone, so just because your best friend is getting married and starting her family does not meet that you have to be doing those things also. There is no "one size fits all" life timeline for people to adhere to.
So the next time that somebody asks you, the girl who has yet to plan out her entire life, a question regarding the distant future, do not feel bad when you can't give them a confident answer because, truly, who can?
