The Life Between the Plans

We make plans. For the weekend, for summer, for the next trip, the next project, the next chapter of our lives. There is always something ahead of us, and there is nothing wrong with that. Plans give us direction. They give us something to work toward and something to look forward to.

But life has a way of happening somewhere else—in the spaces between those plans.

It happens on the slow drive home with someone you love, or during a conversation in the kitchen that lasts longer than expected. It's sitting outside as the evening gets quiet, listening to a child tell you a story that seems unimportant at the time, taking the same familiar walk you've taken a hundred times, sharing a meal, or laughing at something you never saw coming. None of it was on the calendar, and yet years from now, these may be the moments we remember most.

We often imagine that the important parts of life will announce themselves. That somehow we'll know when we're standing inside a moment worth holding onto. But most of the time, they don't. They arrive quietly, disguised as ordinary days, and perhaps that's why they're so easy to miss.

We're often looking ahead to where we're going while life is unfolding right where we are. We tell ourselves we'll slow down when things settle, spend more time together when work isn't as busy, or enjoy things a little more once we reach whatever it is we're working toward. But there will always be something else ahead. Another plan to make, another goal to reach, another place to go.

And we should look forward to those things. There is something beautiful about having a direction and being excited about what might come next. We just shouldn't become so focused on getting there that we overlook everything happening along the way.

Because the space between where we are and where we're going isn't something to get through. It isn't the waiting room for the life we're trying to build.

It is life.

And maybe, when we look back someday, we'll realize that some of the best parts of it were the ones we never planned at all.

Move Freely.