Are you Planning or Preparing to Live?

"Life is what happens to you , / While you are busy making other plans." (John Lennon).When Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, he didn't have a business plan. We need to stop worrying about planning and spend more time preparing! "Prepare the Way of the Lord" -- He did not say plan for it. Leaders "Prepare for the future by 'rehearsing' a variety of scenarios and possibilities.Much of life is a result of what happens spontaneously. Heisenberg describes the incomprehensible mystery at the center of creation, as "Uncertainity Principle". No system behaves in a totally predictable manner."the man who sticks to his plan, will become what he used to want to be" -- James RichardsonMost of the structures of the 21st culture tend toward automatization -- this is where functions become unthinking , reflexive, and automatic. I think every system needs a periodic de-automatization.Have you ever tried to herd a cat or guide a dog? No one steers a living thing; it simply takes one step at a time. No living enterprise moves forward by "planning". Instead, they reveal: "We made it up as we went along."When you come to a pothole, you don't need a strategic plan to get by it. You improvise. After a brief moment of panic, you ad-lib your zig-zags until you regain your bearings. It's not planning strategies that get you down life's potholed or bouldered streets, but improvisational strategies.Starbucks morphed and modulated into success. Kinko's evolved to where it is today. Giacometti  always said that he painted to see were the painting would take me."Think about the Ark and the Titantic. Why did one float and the other did not? One was built by an amateur, the other by professionals. One had elaborate blueprints ad huge specs; the other was intuited and revealed. One was built in the backyard, the other in a shipyard One was built to withstand the unknown; the other tipped over the experience of its builders -- they built it to withstand why they thought they knew.Our 'arks' need to be build for the conditions we are facing, conditions we know we don't know: the utter and complete discombobulation of the future. An Ark is built in the dark.Amateurs have and advantage over professionals. The don't have the light of experience and the training that are no longer valid in our world. An Amateur is not confined by the guidelines of the guild. An Amateur resists the lesson-drawing impulses of the past.An Amateur understands that Faith is the art of hearing the invisible . Hope is the art of believing the invisible. Love is the art of trusting the invisible.