As we begin thinking about our final project, I’d like us to crowdsource ideas for what that document should include. You will be writing something in the neighborhood of 10 pages or so, and it will need to be summative of the course in its integration of ideas and positions. So our ideas on this will change, but let’s go ahead and write something in the sand, before the tide comes in.
Aristotle believed that man should include a number of necessary and desirable elements in his overall aim of and plan for having a good or happy life. These elements should be coherently integrated with one another over a person’s whole life span, including both short-term and long-term goals. This is why he believed in a life plan.
This comprehensive life plan should also elaborate ways to achieve and integrate these aims with a view toward the most completeness (teleiotes) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia). A good life plan has virtuous activity as its cornerstone, according to Aristotle, because a good life is one that is shaped and directed through the exercise of virtue.
Is a good or worthwhile life plan possible? Aristotle states that a man of practical wisdom is able to deliberate “about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general.” So, yes, it’s possible. Because man is a social animal, this plan will include living with and working among family, friends, and fellow citizens, “since man is born for citizenship.”
So, how should we conceive of or organize our life plan? As if it were a self-help book? A declaration of some sorts? As a sort of contract with yourself? I’m interested in your reactions.
Regardless of its final form, here are some sections we might consider including in any template or proposal for a life plan:
- Wisdom
- Knowledge
- Experience
- Identity
- Talents and strengths
- Wealth
- Spiritual development
- Identification and achievement of potentials
- Lifestyle and quality of life
- Health
- Freedom, or liberty, or personal autonomy
- Social freedom
Others? Think in terms of a mini-table of contents for these. What will should be on it? Here’s a first stab:
- Introduction and laying out of basic assumptions
- Description of the approach taken, and of the factors considered
- The life plan itself, divided by section
- Action steps, both near- and long-term
- Conclusions, caveats, qualifications
This is merely meant to get us thinking, to start the process. It’s exciting! It’s up to us, and we get to use Reason!
Deadline for your comment to this post: Thursday, Feb. 2.
How Aristotelian is this life plan supposed to be? If I disagree with Aristotle on how my life should be lived, do I make that part of my essay or change it to reflect a more Aristotelian viewpoint?
I believe a lot in the value of the present. This very moment, right now, is what we as humans have more control over than anything else. An anonymous person once said, “You are so anxious about the future that you do not enjoy the present. You therefore do not live in the future or the present. You live as if you are never going to die, and then die never having really lived.”
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m still so young, and I really don’t know what I want to do with my life yet, but I really do believe in living in the moment. Of course, not all the time – I agree with Aristotle’s Golden Mean; moderation is key to living a good life.
I suppose my real question is, are we writing from our personal perspectives about the life we hope to lead, or are we writing as if Aristotle were to lead this life in our time?
Good questions, Julia. The life plan is or should be Aristotelian only in that we’re talking about a life plan, an Aristotelian notion. Within the plan itself, how Aristotelian should it be? Only to the degree you wish it to be. We (the class, mainly me) are not pushing Aristotle; he’s merely our first heavyweight thinker on our question.
Having said that, “the value of the present” isn’t of much utility in developing a life plan. Certainly you can plan or build in spontaneity and ‘of the moment’ experiences, but a life plan will have to chart a long-term future and say something about how you might get there for it to be a life plan at all. Your anonymous poet notwithstanding, I don’t see holistically thinking about your life as exclusive of “enjoying the present.”
So, given your youth, a virtue you share with everyone else in the class, your life plan should be flexible, broad brushed, to allow for change and specialization over time as you learn more about why you’re on this orb, but substantial enough to help you make the most of your time, even the all-important ‘present’ of the anonymous quote. In other words, if you don’t know where you’re going, even in a general sense, you can never arrive. You can’t even get closer except by accident. And living a purely accidental life is antithetical to the purpose of the course and perhaps to any satisfying answer to, “What is a good life?”
So, yes, by all means, write from your own personal perspectives about the life you hope to live, absolutely. I don’t want anyone writing as if Aristotle were your life coach, unless you want him on your coaching staff.
Does this help?
I’ve, frankly, no idea how this paper is going to come together for me. Perhaps that’s the point. I’ve certainly thought about the future and about what I want in life (we had to do a frustrating amount of that sort of thing in my BCC class), but I have no idea how I can be specific enough to fill multiple pages with meaningful text.
Perhaps I’ve been overly stretching the issue, but the I cannot get over the idea that a happy life must be centered in some kind of divine relationship, unless there is no divinity, in which case I’ve got a lot of work to do reconstructing my worldview. But I’m convinced that there is, so I cannot honestly submit any sort of life plan that is not centered in my desire to enjoy and glorify an entity eternal and supreme called “God”.
I suppose I’m still unclear on what that relationship looks like in the long run or maybe I just have too vague a notion of the rest of my life, but I’ve genuinely very little idea of what to do with this paper. If Jesus is right, and I’m convinced that he is, then the table of contents presented as an example doesn’t work as a usable template for planning a good life. If Jesus really meant “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you” then “spiritual development” is the only facet of life with any real value. I may have made this point far too often, and if so I apologize. I am only trying to understand how to accurately depict my idea of a successful life plan in all aspects and facets of life when my only criteria for a happy life is one centered fundamentally in my relationship with Christ.
Micah, perhaps it would help to conceive of this as a thought piece as much as a blueprint, a document that allows each person to write/think out what a worthwhile life, a good life, might look like for him or her. I certainly don’t want you or anyone else merely “filling pages.”
And no one has asked you to be dishonest, so that implication is almost offensive. Almost.
A related point: I don’t see anything mutually exclusive about a worldview with Jesus at its center and the table of contents above, or with the idea we’re trying to hammer out more generally. Are you saying that by virtue of your worldview, you’ve got it all worked out? It’s already mapped out for you? Articulating a God-directed, kingdom-first life plan would seem to be worthwhile, and God has left tantalizingly vague what any one’s life should look like, at least in terms of specifics, so I’m a bit puzzled.
Finally, I’d like subsequent posters to think a bit more constructively, more from a mindset of presenting ideas and building something rather than discussing how it might not work. No one project is going to delight all 18 of us, and it would be simple and perhaps low-risk to simply assign the typical term paper, but I hope to avoid that. We’re all a bit unclear, which is sort of the reason for this WanderingRocks conversation in the first place.
Thanks Dr. Carroll, that really did help.
From what I gather this isn’t going to be bad at all. I didn’t mean to point out flaws in the plan, only to work out the kinks in my head of what it’s supposed to be. It’s going to be like a very personal, long-term Plan4ward. I hesitated to do that too, until I realized I didn’t have to stick to it; it’s all theoretical, the best guess we can come up with on how we want our lives to be.
I hope it’s okay that I write this as a sort of narrative. That’s how I see it coming together in my head. I’m going to divide it up into sections; one paragraph will introduce my career dreams and goals, one will introduce my hopes for the man I marry and the family I raise, and one will introduce my faith and other personal requirements for being deeply happy. This will most definitely include God; once the first few paragraphs are finished the narrative will intertwine all the aspects of my theoretical life and I expect spirituality to be the centerpiece of the whole shabang.
Maybe I’ll include a paragraph or two that describes my bucket list of crazy things…buying a motorcycle, taking a road trip across the country, hang gliding. This is gonna be fun to write. =]
I’m actually really excited to write my life plan. Even though, like Julia, I like to cherish and make the most of each and every moment, I also like to have a plan or a sort of “to-do list” in order to get everything done. Tabensky states that flourishing, an aspect of happiness, is “activity in a particular direction”; therefore, my life must have a plan in order to make the most of each and every moment. To go back to the StrengthsQuest, my top two strengths are achiever and discipline, so I definitely like to get things done in an orderly fashion. So I’m thinking that I might organize this paper almost like a giant to-do list with my goals in life as things that I want to “check off the list” and achieve in my life.
Obviously, I will not simply list each goal, but I will expand on each one explaining why it is important in my life plan and how I will achieve each goal. I plan to order my goals in the order that I think I will be able to accomplish them throughout my life. Therefore, my most difficult task, and probably most important, will be at the top because I will always be striving to achieve this, but may or may not accomplish this goal. Most of my goals in life will reflect the sections that are listed above: knowledge, experience, identity, talents and strengths, wealth, spiritual development, etc. However, my goals will be slightly more specific like instead of knowledge I may have completion of my Master’s degree in education. Furthermore, I like Julia’s idea of adding “bucket-list” items to her life plan, so I may have to copy that idea and add that as one of my “to-dos” in life (if Julia doesn’t mind).
So overall, I will begin by explaining what I think my happy life would entail and how I view happiness. Then, I’ll explain how my life plan is like a giant to-do list, and it will proceed in the order that I think is most likely for my life to unfold. A very rough list would be completion of school, career, bucket-list, marriage and kids, service, achieving my potential, and fully appreciating God, and the last goals will be things I will strive for my entire life. After giving a brief list, I will elaborate on each goal and how I will get there. Finally, I will conclude with my thoughts on my life plan – if I will achieve everything and if I may modify it later in life.
Good — this is beginning to take some shape. Julia mentioned that she’d like to write in narrative form, which I think is the most appropriate form for these. In fact, it might really help to think of this is the story of your life, or the story your life will possibly tell.
It is absolutely critical that we resist “happy” or “happiness” as affective or emotional states or goals. The course is, “What is a good life,” and our first group of readings have encouraged us to consider “goodness” as a kind of “happiness,” though not an emotional, temporal, fleeting kind. We need to zen with this, that what we’re really speaking of and aiming for is “goodness.” As Nicole just reminded us, of a kind of flourishing.
In thinking through this, the ambiguity of terms, we all will need to explicate or define our terms when we use them, even seemingly simple terms like “happy,” “spiritual,” “moral,” and so forth. We saw on Thursday what can happen. In fact, thinking through for ourselves what some of these words and concepts mean will likely be one of the more valuable aspects of the life plan.
We’ll discuss briefly on Tuesday the whole Plan4ward thing. I’m not all that familiar with it, and I don’t want us to re-invent any wheels.
Favourite quote so far: “Let’s go ahead write something in the sand, before the tide comes in.” If the sand were the world and the tide were death, you’d have a fantastic beginning-of-a-poem.
Hmm…
Sorry for the tangent there. Having gotten that out of the way, let me say I’m very fond of this idea. I think life-planning starts to reconcile those two different perspectives we talked about:
1) Our lives are our own, to make decisions and judgments in
2) Our lives serve a ‘predetermined’ purpose, which we all must strive to fulfill if we are to achieve the good life
Laying out a plan, even a tentative one, takes both of those into account. Maybe the ultimate goals are those that are more defined for us (being the best humans we can be -says Aristotle; living for/like Christ -says Christianity). But the paths we take to reach those goals would reflect our personal choices and free will.
Ideally, a life plan should be the first step in deciding to be an active player in your own life, not just letting it happen to you.
A concern I have about the project is this: If we are creating to-do lists, or a set of ‘necessary’ things that we must achieve…like “a happy marriage” or “a job where I can help people” in order to have a good life…I fear that’s not very realistic. Too often, people have the idea that one and only one trajectory is possible for their life to be lived well. They may not realise they’re limiting themselves, but really they are. I’ll use myself as an example so it doesn’t seem so accusatory, haha.
Let’s say I want to be an author, with a marriage that doesn’t fail, who is constantly developing her faith, and travels to new places. These are my ideals right now; my best-case scenarios. However, in making my life plan, I should be cautious of letting them become ultimatums. What if I get tied down to one city and can’t travel, but it’s because I’ve found meaningful volunteer work there, where I’m needed? More unpleasant, what if I have to get a divorce, but it’s because my husband was abusive? …Should I deem my life a failure, or allow my entire plan to crumble? No.
I’m almost against specific goals such as these, because to me it’s more important how you do things than what you do. If my life plan includes being Christlike, I can do that whether I’m an author, a lawyer, a teacher, or a bricklayer, right? If I make ‘exploration’ a priority in my life, maybe that will be possible through world travel…but on the other hand, maybe something happens to me that prevents that – can’t I also explore where I do live? The day-by-day adventures there, or the characters to discover.
Here’s a final, unrelated thought. Something that could be fun with this project is to make it whimsical. I could write mine as a travel guide, listing the safest, best, or most effective way to reach certain destinations. Or what about a memoir? What if the whole paper was written from the perspective of a me later in life, looking back on what my life has been…all hypothetical, of course. Sorry for writing so much!
Some excellent things to think about here, Frankie. First, you said “A concern I have about the project is this: If we are creating to-do lists, or a set of ‘necessary’ things that we must achieve…like “a happy marriage” or “a job where I can help people” in order to have a good life…I fear that’s not very realistic.”
I agree, and would urge us not to write “to do” lists, or at least not to include them too prominently. There might be a list or two, but the heavy lifting will be in roadmapping your life, in determining what you want to be doing, how you want to be doing it. To another point you made, the emphasis in these plans could very well be on the HOW rather than the WHAT.
A related concern: Including too prominently goals or activities or pursuits you have little to no control over. “Find the perfect mate.” Right. Good luck. This involves a fair degree of luck, or blessing, or fortune. “Be the perfect mate.” Now that I like. You could then describe in rich detail both what kind of person that might be, and quite a bit on how you plan to become that perfect mate.
Lastly, I love the ideas for presentation, including a history written as if the life was complete, or nearly complete, or the metaphorical travel guide. I like these narrative devices a lot!
Initially I’ll admit I was a little overwhelmed with the thought of having to write a life plan for myself. I mean, I’m very futuristic–it was one of my attributes I also received on the Strengths quest, but I’ve always played around with the notion of creating something resembling a bucket list. Now, I know this isn’t a bucket list, but still, taking the time to actually think about how I envision my life to be, is pretty amazing. And with that being said, I’m on the same level as Julia and Nicole and am excited in doing this
So, moving on to how we show conceive or organize our life plan.. Hmm, I like the creative direction that Frankie was going in, with making it “whimsical”. I think if we all get a chance to make this fit our personality, it’ll be more interesting for us to work on without actually feeling like “work”. Who knows? It just might be something we keep even after this class and alter down the road.. This also brings me to agree with something interesting that Frankie stated: “… what if I have to get a divorce, but it’s because my husband was abusive? …Should I deem my life a failure, or allow my entire plan to crumble? No.” I think that what we should keep in mind is that things are subject to change, because we have no control over such things in life. No one plans to get into that kind of relationship and sadly this is an example of the unpredictability of nature, but it does not mean that you were a failure when you died, or that your life was a complete waste. What will make that life pitiful is if the individual lets the unforeseen circumstances define who they are, instead of staying positive and trying to attain happiness, yet again.
With that being said, when I do write my life plan, I will include my aspirations concerning my career, future family, spiritual journey with God, wishes to travel, and anything else I’ve always wanted to do but have not, so far. Although I hope that I will be able to achieve such things, I will keep in mind that I have no control over nature, so if my plans in the future change, I’ll adapt likewise and alter my list.
With the layout, I was thinking of creating a “map” with all of my destinations and explaining each one.. I will start from the past (ie my birth, graduation, ect) to this point at Berry College and include death as my last stop. I hope this is how we’re supposed to view this project.
Ruth said: “What will make that life pitiful is if the individual lets the unforeseen circumstances define who they are.”
This is valuable, because, as Mitchell reminds us in “Home Rule” (a reading for week after next), all of us will experience pain, loss, suffering, even misery, just in different circumstances to different degrees. All of us. No exceptions. So these plans are just that; none of us knows the curveballs life will chuck at us.
I also like Ruth’s admonition to allow these documents to reflect and express each of your individual personalities. It has to be personal, human, authentic.
One caution: While it’s fine to think of this as a map, or as a catalog of aspirations, it’s even more important to think about and chart HOW you will pursue the ‘good’ life you are charting. As many have been saying in different ways, it’s as much the journey as the destination, so richly, thoroughly describe the journey you are planning, not merely the destinations.
A few other helps: Think about what “success” will look like for you. How will you know your life has been “successful,” which likely will divert attention from specific achievements or credentials and shift it to HOW you will pursue goodness.
Also think about, if only for a few moments (I don’t want to scare the bejeesus out of anyone), being a parent. How would you define or describe success or a “good life” for your son or daughter? What would have to be true about how your child lived his or her life? A thought exercise that also reminds us how little we can directly control. As the Dad to three daughters, thinking on this helps me objectify the questions a bit.
We’re making good progress!
I really like the idea of defining “success” in our life plans, and I think that this will encourage use to really define a good like will be in our eyes instead of creating a simple checklist of destinations that we hope to reach.
I also found that imagining a “good life” for a son or daughter very helpful. While certainly the definition of a good life will differ for each individual, it forces me to determine what elements in my mind actually make life good. It encourages me to identify specific characteristics that would make any life worthwhile, not just my own.
In my mind, it is virtually impossible to write any sort of life plan without having in a mind a sort of ultimate purpose of life as a whole. As we discussed in class, asking the question “What is the purpose of your life,” to strangers on the street would no doubt provide an incredible amount of different answers. While this seems a huge task, I think that it would be valuable in the assignment either as a starting place or perhaps a conclusion of the paper.
I definitely agree with Frankie, that instead of simply listing things specific achievements we hope to accomplish, we should strive to discover what our motivation for these desires are. Instead of simply saying I hope to become an author, have a marriage that doesn’t fail, and travel to new place- I think it would be far more helpful in the long run to ask why do I want these things? What do these desires say about myself and how are these attributes significant in my life as a whole. As we have certainly found through our discussions, there is not a cookie cutter “good life.” Certainly it will differ for each individual, and perhaps will even change for one individual depending on their season of life.
I also really like the more creative approach- whether it be a road map or sorts, or another project. However, although I am not completely opposed the idea of writing a ‘memoir’ or something looking back on our lives, I also think that it would be very useful to simply write it from our perspectives where we are. Instead of looking back on our lives, why don’t we write from the point we are at- looking forward into the great unknown, full of hopes and desires but completely unsure at the same time. I agree that for a life to truly be deemed ‘good’ it must considered as a whole, but I think that that for that to be achieved this project does not necessarily have to written from a future perspective. I think of Micah’s reference to The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, noting that even at the end of our lives, the meaning and outcomes of our actions and decisions could be completely altered in the light of eternity. That perhaps even the darkest portions of our lives, time spent in a hell of sorts or rebellion, were perhaps time of preparation for a greater good to come. Even if we were to write looking back on our lives, so many of our choices and decisions may look completely different after our death.
All of this to say, I think there may be some benefit in looking at our lives from our current perspectives, or perhaps combining the two ideas and including different sections analyzing our lives from different ages or views.
I apologize the error- please disregard the unnecessary “a” in the first sentence.
I really connected with the idea brought up by Julia and Nicole of shaping their life plan around certain major checkpoints they hope to achieve in their life, but my concern with this is that our life plans will become too self-centered. For example one of my main goals in life, and a way in which I would use to gage my success, is graduating from vet school. But right now as I look at that goal, I feel like I am acting too selfishly and have not put any thought into achieving “goodness” (and by goodness I mean acting virtuously for the benefit of something larger than myself). Therefore in my life plan, I think I should include how I will use that milestone to better the world around me and how I will specifically take steps along the journey that helps others instead of focusing on my own motives of success.
I also agree with Abbey that the idea of a memoir neglects the fact of how we are approaching this project in the present. I also feel that we need to openly acknowledge that we have no idea how our lives are going to turn out, and maybe, we should even go as far as to include an entire section in our life plan of how to cope with the unexpected, how we should react to the unforeseen. If we dictate a certain mindset that we should hold for the rest of our lives, I feel we will make the best out of any situation, even if it completely deviates from our projected plan.
Also, Dr. Carroll’s idea that our life’s complete happiness includes the lives of our children, did manage to terrify me, yet it served to remind me just how greatly our own lives are out of our control. So in the end, I also agree with Dr. Carroll’s suggestion that all we can really evaluate in this plan is what our actions are, and we cannot set any expectations of what we hope others will do. Like, I hope my future children will grow up to be compassionate beings that serve God in all they do, but there is no way I can control their free will, so all I can evaluate is the steps I will take to instill these values in them.
As for a way of organizing my plan, I would like to separate out each milestone or measure of success I have planned individually, and discuss the ways in which I think are best to discipline myself in order to achieve them- focusing mainly on the bigger implications it has beyond just me. I would also choose milestones in the main areas of education, family, career, friendships, and spirituality, adding any other categories I find useful along the way. I also really like Dr. Carroll’s suggested category of “wisdom” and “identity”. I feel like these would be the hardest for me to make a rough plan of how I want to achieve them, yet I feel like they are a vital part, because if we don’t understand ourselves and have our own convictions about the world, how can we know how we really project ourselves on the world around us.
I’m sorry if I confused anyone with the memoir idea… If I decide to write this way, obviously I’d still be looking at the project as a tentative plan, from the present. This would just be one idea for a creative way to do it. It’s imagining one way the life could turn out… For example, you could talk about what you had wanted to do with it when you were ‘younger,’ how you applied your values in different situations throughout your years, how things shifted and changed while still reflecting your priorities… All the same content, really, just written *as if* from the other end of the timeline.
Taylor said: “I also agree with Abbey that the idea of a memoir neglects the fact of how we are approaching this project in the present.”
The idea of a memoir is simply a literary device, asking the writer to use his or her imagination to look back on the good life the writer is, by writing the piece as a sort of autobiography, planning to live. You can play with notions of time, in other words. Think of it as a sort of benevolent Minority Report.
I like the idea of writing our life plan from the future looking back. I had to do a (somewhat) similar project in high school, and we used that sort of method for writing it. It allowed us not only to easily discuss the plans we had for our lives, but also to reflect on the implications of our plans and how they affected those around us.
About what to include in our life plans… This may have been mentioned already (there are so many posts now, I can’t remember if I read it or not), but definitions of how we are using words that could be defined several way might be helpful to include. Then again, they may go under the “Description of the approach taken, and of the factors considered” part.
My final thought.. one of our past readings, I think it might have been from “The Gift of Fire,” mentioned life plans being written out in a sort way kind of like a self help book (How to Live Life, I think). This may be kind of redundant though.
And on a separate note, does anyone else have a gray icon? It makes me sad that everyone else gets a bright, colorful one and mine is only gray.
One of the requirements for graduation at my highschool was a project that included a full autobiography and a philosophy of life. I had no idea how challenging that would be to write until I started my project. I ended up doing something very similar to the ideas we’ve discussed here. I will obviously change my approach for this assignment, but one thing I found really valuable was writing my philosophy of life as a letter to my future daughter. I wrote to her of some of the mistakes I have made and hope that she does not make and also I wrote to her the things that I believe make life worth living. My philosophy of life letter serves as a reminder to me of the life I really want to live at the same time as being an encouragement to her. I learned a lot through writing that and thinking about the kind of parent that I want to be and the way that I want to explain my beliefs to my children.
This life plan definitely lends itself to creativity and I’m excited to figure out how to write it. I think it will be difficult to move beyond lists of the things we want in life and talk about how to pursue them and how to live as if we really valued those things. I love the idea that happiness is an action. That means we can’t just expect happiness to come right up and introduce itself to us, we have to do something – the question is what to do and how to do it.
I will likely construct my response by looking at the past, present and future because I think all three are vitally important. I couldn’t talk about what I want out of my life in the future if I didn’t think about what led me to want those things and how my present experiences have molded and changed those desires – it just wouldn’t make sense to have one without the others.
Is this project limited to a paper structure? Can there be some kind of art or other non-paper component? Will we be sharing these with each other during class or will we just turn them in? I think it would be really interesting and valuable to learn from each other’s life plans.
Chelsea asked: Is this project limited to a paper structure? Can there be some kind of art or other non-paper component? Will we be sharing these with each other during class or will we just turn them in?
Good idea to open up questions about formatting. I’m certainly open to alternative formats. Art is fine, but as an adjunct to rather than a replacement of the main component, certainly. I thought briefly about video, as well, but how to do this in a compelling way would be a bit of a challenge.
Ideas?
I think that the life plan should be more of a self reflective paper. I time to examine our lives so far and sum that up. then, express what we find as our morals and ethics based on our past actions. then move on to examining how we would deal with future curveballs, and where we would see ourselves happy. I think that a year by year plan of our lives as boring and irrelevant because of chance. also, a plan built from the future down does not seem right because we would be moving from the most uncertain (we don’t even know if we will hold the same morals at the end) to the most certain. it feels like when working backward i will reach a point that i will think that the persons life plan i am building doesn’t resemble me. i also think our life plan should dedicate sometime to our flaws. we all agree that we are not perfect, but to what extent are we imperfect and will striving to be better help or hurt in our journey to the good life.
To be honest, I would much rather write a paper reflecting on a general good life instead of writing a life plan for myself. I think it is going to be difficult to write ten pages on something that is so uncertain. I realize that this method of thinking is not constructive, however, so I will get to my ideas for the life plan.
First off, I think that the paper should be unspecific in terms of the plan, because people will change their goals and beliefs multiple times in the future. Thinking about myself, I have already changed my major after just one semester. As a result, I know that I could very well change again. In the paper, for instance, I would say that I would like to be successful in whichever job I end up doing, rather than saying I want to be a successful lawyer.
I also think that the artistic component mentioned by Chelsea seems like a good idea for anybody that is artistically inclined, but I think something like that should be completely optional. I know that I am not artistic at all, so it would be near impossible for me to turn in anything that comes anywhere close to something of acceptable quality. And that’s basically everything I had to add to what’s already been said.
To be honest, this whole life plan thing really scares me. The problem is, that as of right now, I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. To speak metatphorically, It’s like I’m walking around in a super foggy field at night. I can only see about 3 feet in front of me, and so don’t really know where I’m going. I have a general destination in mind, but don’t know how or if I will get there. However, I do acknowledge that it would be a good idea to have some course planned out, despite the fact that I don’t even know if it’s going in the right direction. I like this life plan idea because even though I don’t know what’s going on in my life now, a course to follow would always be helpful. At least then I would be moving towards something. I had a great math teacher in highschool who, whenever we didn’t know how to solve a problem, would tell us just to do what we did know, because, in his words, “it’s much easier to turn a moving boat around than a stationary one.” Therefore, I think I would like to think of this project not as a real “plan” for my life, but more as an opportunity to explore a few possibilities that might get me to my end destination. It would probably be a good idea to come up with an end destination as well.
I know this is all really vague, but as so many people above have pointed out, there’s a lot that we can’t control in life. As I stated earlier, I don’t know what I will make of my life, but in order to do anything with it, I have to at least have an idea of what my options are.
I also like the question “why?” I like contemplating it in relation to the criteria for our life plan, but when it actually comes down to it, I’m not sure how to approach it. I make lists and order my day to complete them. In this sense, I like the idea of holding the finished product of a life plan in my hands. However, the unknown is incredibly daunting, and I’m not sure I know myself well enough to assess and compose my desires and goals for a well-lived life. I don’t want to create a pretend life plan either because I think this is a worthwhile assignment and merely marking it off the list won’t do it justice.
I think a plan is possible, but we always have to be prepared to be thwarted by uncontrollable events. Goals and plans are valuable and aid us in this self-examination, but if we allow ourselves to be limited or defined by them, they become distracting and pull our attention from truly living. It may be hard for me to hit the appropriate balance between set goals and flexibility.
I really like Chelsea’s idea of a creative/artistic component that is perhaps optional and also sharing a general idea of our plan with the class.
While I look forward to having the plan, I am intimidated by creating the plan. I think of events in my life as domino related, and when I begin thinking about one I am overwhelmed.
Whenever I’ve done assignments or exercises like this in the past, I tend to mentally have two sections of plans or goals. One is a section of broad, general, and occasionally vague ideals that will be applicable no matter what I do or where I am in life. Things like “living selflessly,” and “loving people well” fall into this category as the sorts of things that I’ve come to think are necessities for living my life as God has called me. As we’ve seen in class, these kinds of ideas are compelling and worthwhile, but not always clear or concrete and a life plan made entirely of these would probably end up sounding nice, without saying very much that was original or particularly personal.
My second mental section involves more day-to-day concrete things: marriage, kids, career, higher education, etc. Unfortunately, this area has always been a little fuzzy for me and I can tend to think pretty shallowly when I’m thinking about it. I’ve always expected that I would go to college–and here I am–and I’ve certainly toyed with ideas about grad school and careers, but I don’t have something that I’m just desperate to do after college. Everybody these days talks about finding your passion and being sure that that is what you spend your life doing, but I have yet to find that passion. I have lots of things I’m interested, and I can think of lots of things that I’d probably be happy to work at, but there is no one thing that I’m just dreaming of doing for the rest of my life. And by-and-large, I think that’s OK for now. The problem is that it makes an assignment like this particularly difficult.
I’m certainly interested in seeing how this paper turns out, and I think writing it will be a good process and I will learn about myself in the course of writing. For now, though, the best I can muster as to a plan is assuming that there will be a marriage between my two mental sections to create something more practical and applicable than either gives me by itself.
As a busy college student balancing homework, classes, clubs, jobs etc. I rely heavily on the use of my planner to tell me how my day will look, what homework I have to do, and when I will have time to do it. It helps keep me organized and reduces my level of day-to-day stress. However, the I find that I approach the idea of doing the same for my life with extreme caution. I actually don’t like the idea of having a life plan; it seems to take away from the adventure. One of my main arguments against there being a “divine plan” is that if my life has already been planned out somewhere, what’s the point in me actually living it? I like to see my life as a story, ever evolving, and myself as a character in it. There is an Author (though really he is more of an assistant with the power to change what he wants) and certainly no shortage of audience involved. But who enjoys reading a book or watching a movie when they already know what is going to happen next and how it ends?
As opposed as I may be to laying out a plan for myself, I will admit that I am a little interested in how my finished product will look. It’s like reading predictions on how one will die; I have a sick desire to read it that equals my fear of knowing. I, of course, have some things that I hope to one day achieve. Success in my chosen career, two beautiful kids and an adoring husband, a home that is my own, and the freedom to strive for all these things. These are generalized wishes, however, and I think that they can apply (perhaps in different forms) to almost everybody. How I get to this place, however, stands to be decided.
Aside from not wanting to know, I think that writing my life plan will also be impossible to do. Tomorrow I could (God forbid) be hit by a truck and be paralyzed from the waist down. That would seriously impair some of my aspirations. Or I could pick up the winning lottery ticket and leave Berry College as a multimillionaire, never to work a day in my life. I think that the best way to live life is to make the best of the situations I am given. It would be stressful to try and match up my life plan with reality as I am sure there would be many obstacles and much failure. If I don’t hang up my future on something I expect to happen but cannot control, I won’t be frustrated if it doesn’t, and I will be one step closer to the good/happy life.
The idea of a life plan at first seems a little daunting. I really don’t know what I plan to do, or how I plan to go about it. So my question is: are we writing for us specifically or more generally. Is it how we feel we should or want to live or should we be referencing the class and writing a universal life plan that can be applied to anyone anywhere based on our discussion. I guess it could be both.
Another question: what is the length? you said 10 pages is that how it is going to stay or is that still up in the air, not that I have a number in mind I just want to know what I have in front of me.
I think I will tackle this assignment somewhat like I how I wrote my mission statement for Plan4ward. I’ll begin writing notes about what I value most in life now and what I think I should put more importance on in my life. I’ll then consider what I must do to maintain these values. The organization of my essay will probably be a discussion of my values and goals for my life and then a discussion of how I will work to maintain and achieve those. I will probably discuss what educational and vocational goals I have in my mind but also discuss being open in my heart to any curveballs life throws at me.
I just wanted to add that I really love Chelsea’s idea of including art. Certainly that would be in addition to a written plan of some sort, but I think it would be hard for me to attempt to express my thoughts on my life plan without creativity.