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020102:
Quote #238
Making
Plans
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Among
the many good reasons for making plans
is the fact that the future can be enjoyed
as fully as the present or the past. But
most of what we enjoy, we enjoy specifically.
A contemplated week in Paris, pleasant
as a generalized concept, becomes much
more pleasant when we know that it will
include a visit to the Sainte-Chapelle,
afternoons at the Louvre and Cluny, a
splurge, a stroll on the Ile St. Louis,
an evening at the Opera preceded by cocktails
at the cafe of the same name and followed
by onion soup near the old site of Les
Halles, a morning Metro-ride to the Jardin
des Plantes or the Vincennes Zoo. In this
way the projected days become a delightful
union of the real and the ideal; and the
future, huge yet as transparent and inconsequential
as vacant sky, takes on dozens of meaningful
shapes. People suspect that planning will
shackle them; but, with moderation, this
is almost never the case. If you make
plans, you may always diverge from them—committing
what is itself a pleasant act of freedom.
If you do not make plans, you leave the
future an empty field of chance, uselss
to the present, forfeit to your own unpredictable
moods. You insult time, and it turns away
from you a face that could have been full
of solace. And you imply to yourself that
the two other dimensions of time, past
and present, mean less to you than they
might or should.
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