A month before John Lennon was assassinated, his final album, Double Fantasy, was released. The most popular song to emerge was a beautiful song about a beautiful boy, holding lyrics that were quite enigmatic to me until recently.
As the school year wound down, I was pursuing a new job as a full-time teacher. Little did I know I would end up with my first full-time professor job. Until I received the call, my career prospects were uncertain. As I applied and interviewed at several schools, I was moving, a process that took a month—I would not recommend this to anyone—and ended the day before my wife’s induction date.
Nine days before, on our way to a thrift store to look for a dining table, I drove straight through an intersection with a green light and another driver hit the passenger side head on. My pregnant wife was safe, the baby unharmed, but the accident resulted in a total loss and the need to shop for a car to replace the Honda Civic we only had for ten months.
The baby came early. The night before the scheduled induction, my wife’s water broke. Having no car, we asked my mom to take us to the hospital at 10 o’clock at night. 23 hours of labor, 1 and a half hours of delivery, and our son, a beautiful boy, was born.
Job hunt. Moving. Car accident. Baby. Some of life’s greatest stressors and most significant changes all happening simultaneously. Through the haze, the words I never quite understood stuck out with previously unseen clarity.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
Life is what happens to you.
When I was 18, my Dad gave me some life advice: “God can’t steer a ship unless it leaves the dock.” In life, we must set out. We steer our ship towards a destination, but we cross a sea of troubles, and so our ship gets blown and battered, twisted and capsized. Part of setting sail is welcoming uncertainty and struggle. That is precisely the point.
Life is never so bad because the storm passes, the sea calms, the sun glistening on the water like a mirror, reflecting the life you have for what it is, the life you created for what it will be. All the plans you were busy making while life happened to you only matter insofar as your ability to put them in perspective.
All struggle comes to an end in the end. All plans don’t go to plan. The fact that life happens to you is as important as how you learn to deal with what life throws at you, for life does not simply happen to you, but for you.
