Life Doesn't Follow the Agenda

There are a great many quotes about our being surprised by events in life, even after we carefully plan what we mean to do or for to happen.  One question we might ask is why we even try to have that sort of long-reaching, global control, and the answer is probably that we just like to have the security that we can plan for everything and are capable of preventing disaster for ourselves and those we care about.  Unfortunately, the truth is that we cannot.  Our control over our surroundings goes only so far.  Some people relinquish all control, so they say, trusting in a higher power to do what is "best" for them, although often enough they rage against this power's decisions anyway, or try to reinterpret them to find some personal benefit.  Beyond the facts of our situation in life, there is also the emotional component.  The Leader mentioned being able to plan for the things that satisfy us with our lot, not just having a goal in the fuzzy future, and not being able to make and carry out plans does pose a problem for being happy with life's agenda.  Moreover, not knowing what will actually make us happy can cause kinks in the plan, because we all have different desires, likes and needs.  We see some people who at least appear to be happy with what they do and have done, and we try to emulate them.  It does not always work.  Then, we might give in to frustration, since we have followed the plan as best we could, but Life has not followed "The Agenda" of making us happy.

The Source was pleased with the Leader's comments and began by emphasizing the connections between people, saying that we do not create agendas in isolation.  Our plans are always affected by others.  She was also very pleased with The True Philosopher's admonition/suggestion to fit our lives to the reality we discover rather than vice versa, calling it the best idea to come out of this meeting.  Another Participant mentioned fortune telling and the lack of credibility they enjoy in wider society.  The Source retorted that in the specific case of lottery numbers, nobody can predict them because they do not exist until the moment they are drawn from the bowl, come up on the wheel, or appear using whatever method that lottery uses.

Our Doctor was rather in his element what with the mental workings that are evident in the topic.  First, he said that "life" is just a word, and like all words, in the end it means nothing.  As for agendas, many people do not bother creating one, just a number of hopes and dreams without any specific plan to reach them.  Besides that, our context and reality is always changing and there is some amount of folly in sticking firmly to a plan one made in the past.  Later he told us that everything is dangerous, and therefore we should be educated to change things.  We are the best animals in the universe, the most capable of doing what we want, at least as far as we know.  Happiness in humans can be taught and learned, but it, like our plans and our visions of the future, is in the frontal lobe - biology.  Life is not just philosophy, biology is in everything.  While we should work out the best ways to get what we want, we must also be flexible, and see reality as something we can develop rather than something that naturally occurs to serve us.  He also remarked on the importance of others to our plans and agendas, saying that it is necessary to be "infected" by others' ideas, so that we can develop antibodies and survive.

The Leader did not develop the topic much in writing this time, but did elaborate in the meeting itself.  Again, the idea that outside forces are always affecting our plans came up, victimizing our plans, he said.  As for reality, he wondered what the point of having a brain to wonder about it was, if we accept that we cannot actually access reality.  He then moved on to pleasure and happiness, saying the agenda is based on knowing what gives us pleasure and projecting our ideas of pleasurable situations onto the future, then working out the path to those situations.  The goals exist, but not detailed plans.  This is why it seems life does not follow our agenda, but the truth is we did not have steps for it to follow in the first place. 

The True Philosopher wrote a bit on accepting the disappointments of our lives in order to achieve happiness, or at least be less unhappy.  We need to scale down our hopes and become accustomed to being unfulfilled.  Also, it is best to take things less personally and externalize the disappointments rather than see them as internal failings. 

The Instructor emphasized the importance of having plans, otherwise we do nothing.  In her own experience, however, too many plans cause stress without contributing anything to our satisfaction in life.  We may have the illusion that nothing changes, relying on systems of prediction like the I-Ching, but we have to be prepared for the unexpected.  She reminded us of the definition of intelligence that was flexibility in changing circumstances.

As a group, we have faced changes that seemed to come out of nowhere, but we have been able to use them to certain advantage.  Hopefully, that means we are intelligent people, and always on the road to better things.