“Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth.”

This quote jumped out at me yesterday when I was going through my email.  It was part of a message meant to inspire fortitude and encourage mental preparation for those days when things go awry.  And that’s cool…I mean, I think it’s pretty nifty that this quote by Mike Tyson has turned into a positive metaphor for a life lesson…only…I don’t think he meant it to be a positive metaphor at the time it was said…and I think I relate more to his original intention rather than the positive spin it’s been given since the first utterance.

Taken as a warning label, you can interpret his message to read – plan intentionally for those times when things WILL go wrong; have a back-up plan; have a Plan B.  Expect the unexpected, and your plan won’t fail you.  

I’ve always thought of myself as a Murphy’s law kind of girl.  “Whatever CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong…” and I’ve always tried to plan accordingly.

When I read that quote of Mike’s, I immediately lost myself in the sensory images those words conjured up inside the cinematography of my brain. 

I saw that hard fist coming at my mouth; I felt the painful crush of teeth cutting through lip, my head snapping back from the neck.  I experienced the discombobulated sensation of being lifted in the air, feet losing footing, falling backward into space, watching an upside-down version of my world spin by in slow motion, a blurred reality shifted by the space of a second. 

I lay there in shock, stunned stupid by the first crack of skull against the unforgiving solidness of a ground without give, gazing up in confusion from a position of abject helplessness.  Pain wars with confusion and the ability to form conscious thought is overtaken by the subconscious inventory of bodily queries: 

What just happened? 

Where am I?

Am I still breathing? 

Am I bleeding?

Where does it hurt?

What just happened?

Can I move anything?

What just happened?

And whatever “agenda” I had been operating under, whatever “plan” I may have had when I started the day?  Has been lost in the blackout of my life’s course…

There is no doubt in my mind THAT was Mike’s meaning when he spoke about an upcoming match against an opponent who had all sorts of “plans” about how to defeat Mike in the ring.  Mike’s plan?  To punch his opponent so hard in the mouth that all thoughts of “plans” were knocked completely out of his head.

When that happens, you’re left with only the animal instinct of survival, of avoidance of pain, executing reflexive actions automatically in response to attack.  There’s no time to form a coherent thought, much less activate any contingency plan.  There’s an excruciating need to roll over and get to your hands and knees in order to suck in much needed oxygen and conduct a true inventory of the damage, but you’re too busy hugging yourself in the fetal position in order to protect yourself from an unpredictable kick to the stomach you know is coming, though you don’t know when, from which direction, or how hard…

There are certain situations that are impossible to plan for…and that punch?  More often than not, it takes the form of a simply stated sentence. 

You’re fired.

I don’t want to marry you.

I want a divorce.

You have cancer.

Your (loved one) died at the scene.

You can’t have children.

You were in an accident.

You lost your baby.

You’ll never walk again.

You have Alzheimer’s.

You have ALS.

She’s gone.

He’s gone…

It’s mind blowing how six words or less can pack even more power than a punch in the mouth, leaving you without a plan, without a thought, with barely a sense of how you even got there…

Oh God, how.it.hurts.  That emotional pain goes deeper and stays longer than that of the physical hurt and healing is slower than a chihuahua pulling a tractor in a blizzard over a frozen lake of fire.

I see a blurry image of my aunt in my head, tsk tsking, and shaking her head, the murmur of, “Best laid plans…” trailing off into ominous silence while she putters about her kitchen.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Plans.  We had plans before we heard those three fateful words. 

We had plans and we thought we were ahead of the game, light years ahead of most people who reach retirement only to find themselves ‘too old’ to enjoy their golden years.  We saw that happen to Charlie’s grandparents.  They worked so hard for so long, flying south for the winter to hang with their peeps, creating a recreational community they would one day call home on a permanent basis.  And after more years had passed than planned, it finally happened.  They sold the family home up north and built a house in a retirement community in Florida.  Only, by this time, so many of their ‘peeps’ were already gone…or had moved elsewhere.  And shortly after, illness crept in stealthily, stealing away precious moments only to fill them with doctor’s visits, hospitalizations, and medications.

We had plans.

We determined we would figure out a way to live better sooner rather than waiting until later and risk being too old and infirm to enjoy it.  When Charlie started undergoing testing, we were already in phase one of our plan to move out of the city and start living our best life.

We had a plan…until we didn’t…because we got punched in the mouth.

Our ‘plans’ disintegrated into a thousand particles of dust, and we watched with unseeing eyes from the flat of our backs, as every single plan we thought we ever had floated away into the unattainable nebula above us.  

You have ALS.

There would be no Plan B.  We were in survival mode.

The thing about survival is that you can only live each day for itself.  Planning has no place, no purpose, no point, when there’s reason to believe your tomorrow might never arrive.  Yet it’s hard to let go of something so deeply ingrained in your psyche.  Living without a plan feels as unnatural as consciously drawing and expelling every single breath you take.  It’s behavior that has to be deliberately unlearned, because there’s no room for it in a world without a Plan B.

Instead, every ounce of energy is reserved for, and channeled into, finding a way to get through each day and loving it for what is.  Not because we were living our best life.  Not because we were gleaning satisfaction from planning our work and working our plan.  And not because we saw the mirage of a fabulous future in the distance teasing us to run after it like a rabbit on the rail along the track.  

We simply became grateful for the simple state of existence, of being in that moment, at that time, for as many moments as we would be given.  Grateful, we were in them together.

He’s gone.

I spent a lot of time curled up in the metaphorical fetal position after that punch…tears flowing, desperate to catch my breath, dazed by the finality of it all.  There were no ‘plans’ to fall back on.  No protocols in place.  Nothing left to strive for.  I was back at square one, feeling adrift, with no clear direction, the road map of my life having been ripped from my very fingertips.  A very lonely, lost place to be.

We are a culture of “planners.”  And it starts from SUCH an early age.  In middle school, kids are already being asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  And we’re excited about their answers, hoping to push them to identify their strengths and build on those.  But, how in the hell are they supposed to have even the slightest idea of how they want to spend the next seventy years of their life after having only spent twelve years or so on the planet?  And OF those twelve, maybe ONE actually contains enough cognitive thought process to even realistically contemplate such an ambiguous wondering.

By the time they’re in high school, panic sets in at the realization that they have only three short years left until deciding a course for the rest of their life becomes very, VERY real.  You gotta have a plan.  How many times must they hear that a week? 

What’s your plan…

I used to make plans.  Because I once had a life plan.  It was a plan that consisted of career, of achievement, of love, of family, children, and growing old next to someone whose company I enjoyed and whose presence in this world was an indispensable piece of that plan. 

There’s no such thing as “Plan B” when you’re starting over from scratch.  There is nothing to be salvaged, nothing to be saved, nothing to build upon, there is no picking up where you left off.  You are at.square.ONE.

I don’t have a plan.

I make decisions.  I do things.  Some good, some bad…but I don’t have a plan.  I think that’s probably why most people find it hard to wrap their head around our move to Maine.  It wasn’t a strategic move geared toward generating an advancement in career.  We’re not “from” here, so it wasn’t a matter of returning to the place of our roots.  It wasn’t a favorite vacation spot, or any kind of spot, that had any connection to our life before.  This is all brand new.

You could say these last three years have represented the middle school years of my ‘griefhood.’  A peculiar place in which to find oneself, but perhaps a small blessing in disguise.  Because instead of spending them figuring out what I WANT to do, I’ve spent them figuring out what I DON’T.

I DON’T want to spend my life being stressed out.  I don’t want to surround myself with negative energy or contribute to that poisonous atmosphere.  I don’t want to exhaust myself with the minutia of living a ‘successful life’ to the point where I forget to actually LIVE the gift of life I’ve been given.  And I especially don’t want to expend precious energy chasing after anything that doesn’t add intrinsic value to my life, or the life of my child.    

I don’t know how long it will take for me to construct a second Plan A.  Or if it is something I will ever choose to do again.  It feels like I gave up planning such a long time ago.  I sometimes visualize God saying, “I know you thought you had it all planned out, but that wasn’t MY plan, you see…”  And while letting go of planning feels a bit like giving up control…it also feels a little bit freeing. 

I only just now find myself entering the halls of “Grief High,” feeling those first few flutters of excitement, not knowing what the future might possibly hold, but hopeful it holds something good.  And while I still have no clear sense of the direction I want to go…the direction I am supposed to go, I DO know that I want it to be meaningful, to have purpose. 

I want to create worthwhile relationships that will be a critical part of what makes life so impactful.  And I want to always be mindful of the living, breathing world around me, having the ability to look and really see its fantastic intricacy and marvel at its beauty.

So, for now, while it may feel like I’m aimlessly floating along, minute by minute, forever outside the boundaries of the movers and shakers of this world, I am trusting that God has another Plan A for me.  And that I will have the ability to roll with the punches.