Man plans. Life laughs! · (Being) The Steady Parent

Man plans. Life laughs!

That job interview. That carefully chosen program. That exam, tryout, trip, or next step we quietly pinned our hopes on. When it falls apart, it’s not funny. Not even a little. It hurts. It’s disappointing. And it usually sucks for everyone nearby, too.

But if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve probably noticed something else happens next. When you don’t arrive where you planned to be, you end up where you were meant to be.

I’m not a religious guy. This isn’t about destiny or divine intervention. It’s just an observation: nearly every life-altering turn in my life arrived after a plan collapsed.

My parents moved across the province during my Grade 12 year, completely out of my control. I went to the University of Guelph on what amounted to a random choice, having never even visited. It turned out to be transformative. I met lifelong friends. I learned how to paint from amazing artists. I found my direction.

Ottawa came next, simply because it accepted me for teaching. More friendships. More roots. Nova Scotia followed for my master’s degree. I met my wife in Halifax, and then I stumbled into the rare chance to build a new art program in the Annapolis Valley, and somehow never left. I raised my kids here. I built a life here. I still wake up grateful for the people, the work, the outdoors, and the community.

None of it was planned.

In 2018, the job I thought was my “next step” was filled internally. Another crash. Another disappointment. But because that door closed, I earned my doctorate from Calgary without leaving home. Something I never could have imagined while clinging to the original plan.

If any of those plans had worked out the way I intended, I wouldn’t be here sitting in a café on a snow day, reflecting on how often the crash delivered better outcomes than the plan ever promised. I mean, it happened in my best artworks too. Artists understand the classic sneeze on a litho-stone, the hand slipping on the last stroke in a portrait, the charcoal getting in the graphite. Ironically, these incidents brought the freedom of chaos that I responded to by integrating the splatter, scraping away the uptight perfection, and mixing the mediums to arrive at a much more exciting work!

This is the lesson I hold onto when I sit with teens who are in the middle of their own beautiful disasters.

When the things we assume are within our grasp are suddenly revealed to be out of our control, there’s a strange freedom available, if we choose to look for it.

Laughing helps.

We laugh when a friend slips on slush (assuming they’re okay) because it punctures our quiet belief that we’re in charge. It exposes the absurdity of our confidence. And that laughter does something important: it turns the crash into a story.

Stories create meaning. They let us rummage through the wreckage, notice patterns, and ask better questions. They loosen the grip of “this was supposed to happen” and replace it with “what else might be possible?”

When a plan breaks, we are suddenly released from its map. That release creates space to play, to explore, to experiment.

This is what fearless experimentation looks like in real life. Not recklessness. Not denial. But treating the failure as data, not a verdict. Modeling that it’s safe to be unfinished. Showing young people that the crash doesn’t end the story it opens it.

I know this works because, apparently, I built my entire life this way.

What do you find in the remnants of a failed plan?

Transformative lessons

Dissapointment and defeat

Previously unforseen opportunities

Seeds of hope

All of the above.

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