Close Encounters

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” ~Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism (600 BC -531 BC)

It had been pouring rain off and on for three days. All our plans for that Sunday had been washed away with the winter rains. We had arranged a special birthday experience for our daughter, Angela, combining brunch at a local restaurant of her choosing, a trip to visit her Grandmother in the convalescent home and a gratis “hair-do” by her favorite beautician. We had a long history with this particular beautician. Joanne had styled Angela’s hair since high school including proms, formals, graduations and even her wedding. For all intents and purposes she was family.

Our best laid plans were no match for the intervals of torrential downpours. Angela’s drive up the 405 from Redondo Beach, hampered by weather and traffic accidents, had taken twice as long as usual. Undoubtedly, the trip back, in the twilight of early winter darkness, would take as long if not longer.

Our plan had been to finish brunch in time to visit her Grandmother during her noon meal. When that didn’t work out Angela headed straight to her Grandmother’s care facility and then to the beautician, blood sugar plummeting due to lack of food.

When Angela arrived at the Hair Style Salon she had put in an emergency call to her mom (Teresa) for food. Still the best take out in town; Teresa packed lunches for the three of us. Then we drove to the salon so we could visit with our daughter during her hairstyling.

I rested in a black swiveling reception chair still dressed in my long, dark brown trench coat. Teresa and Angela sat opposite me in similar padded chairs. Angela’s head was covered with the stuff beauticians put on people’s hair. Sometimes the less you know the better.

So there we sat; munching away on our ham and cheese sandwiches on sprout bread with brown mustard. The meal was rounded out with sliced apples, small bags of cashews, cheese sticks and bottled water. With only one other customer in sight we had the run of the place and had requisitioned an alcove at the back of the shop.

We caught up on family gossip, shared stories, discussed recipes, confirmed holiday plans and generally enjoyed each other’s company. Somewhere along the way we realized the context of our visit didn’t matter; it was each other’s company we enjoyed the most.

Hair rinsed and ready for the scissors we moved to a different part of the salon. It was Joanne’s turn to catch us up on her life and our lives’ frame of reference widened accordingly. There was someone new in Joanne’s life and she shared her joy with us.

As she was finishing up (both the hair-do and the update) we paid the bill (our gift) and said goodbye to our daughter. “This turned out to be a really nice birthday,” she said, giving us each a hug.

After extracting a promise from her to call us when she got home we headed out the door into the rain. An old Woody Allen adage came to mind as we trotted through the parking lot to our car: “If you want to make God smile…tell him your plans.”

It is an irony that life often irritates us by interfering with our plans. Yet it is life which is most important. True stewardship is not how well we plan our time, but how well we live our time. It is not about the execution of our plans, but the experiencing of our life. Crafting our life is not the same as living our life. Life can only be experienced through human encounter, through interacting with the world even when those interactions are not exactly what had in mind for ourselves.

Unfortunately we often allow our happiness to be defined by the flawless execution of our plans. We become frustrated when things don’t work out as we intend. Potentially pleasant human encounters become disappointments over poor execution: the lost reservation, the delayed schedule, the late guest or family member, all pull us away from the simple joy of human interaction. The warmth of sharing our stories, our joys and sometimes even our hurts is dissipated by our need to control. Life was meant to be lived; not managed to death.

If we are to be truly happy in life we need to enjoy the journey, not fret about how well we followed our itinerary. Rest assured God has a different one in mind.

Dear God: Remind me to stop, look and listen.

“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.” ~Ben Okri, Nigerian author (b1959)

© 2011 James E. Carper. All rights reserved.

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