One of the most popular questions asked by employers, interviewers, or just curious family members wonders what you expect your future to bring in the next couple years. Some people have a general idea, while others have a detailed, step-by-step plan that they never want to stray from.

And while it's okay to speculate about what lies in store for you, it's important to remember that plans never seem to go the way we want them to. Something always seems to not work out in your favor, whether that thing is so tiny that you can work past it, or so enormous that it screws up everything, as if everything in your future was relying on it.

I recently got out of a relationship that lasted over two years. As an 18-year-old, two years is a pretty large chunk of my life. If you had asked me at nearly any point of those two years where I saw myself in ten years, I had a very specific vision for my future. I planned on marrying the boy I was dating (hopefully with a honeymoon at Walt Disney World). Even though most of our relationship was during my high school career, I had no doubt in my mind that this man is the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Sure, he wasn't perfect (no one is), but when you love someone, you are able to love their imperfections too. That's just what I did.

I also believed he looked at me the same way (and maybe he did, but I guess I'll never know). He expressed his desire to marry me someday, and we planned an intricate future together. He even went so far as to give me a promise ring, telling me outright that he would always be there for me.

Of course, as you know, things didn't work out the way we planned, and our future together fell apart. I made the mistake of building almost my entire future around this one boy, and when our relationship crumbled, I was alone in the rubble.

The important thing to take away from this is that you never really know what the future holds. In all honesty, it's pretty much impossible to truly know what lies in store for tomorrow, the next day, or two years from now until it actually happens. Plans change, people leave, things get cancelled, and that's just a part of life. Frankly, developing a detailed and rigid play-by-play plan for your life without room for change or the unexpected is just setting yourself up to be let down. Plans don't go the way we want them to.

Now, I'm not saying to not plan at all. It's important to go to college, save money, and do whatever it is you do to make your future as bright and hopeful as possible. But there's a difference in flexibility here: your rigid plans won't account for the roller coaster of life, but planning ahead can help make the coaster less bumpy. It's important to see the difference.

So the next time someone asks you, "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" it's okay to have a plan, but remember to remain open and flexible for whatever cards you are dealt. Things may not go the way you intend for them to go, but no matter how badly your plans are messed up, it will always turn out okay in the end.