If life is short,why we need planning for the future?

Answer 1

This deserves a great answer because it is a great question. I like the last answer. I can add only a little. We can't really know the future. Those who plan it out too rigidly are bound to be disappointed. Life is short and you never know when your moment to shine will come. Whatever God has planned for us for eternity, he has given us today and the hope of tomorrow. All we can do is get up tomorrow and live the day. Since our days are so precious few, why waste them by being unprepared? I'm probably half way through my life, or more, and it occurred to me the other day that a lot of the things I planned for did not work out the way I planned. Yet I had to admit to myself that I am living the life that I planned to live. I feel fortunate to recognize that, and suspect that most of us are living the lives we planned on living.

There is a philosophy that basically says that if we live today and die very soon, then we should eat, drink, chase women and enjoy the pleasures while we can. That is the theme of John Cougar Mellencamp's Jack and Diane - great rock song but a dead end philosophy. The main line is "life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." I think I am much happier now than when I was a teenager in the backseat of my car with a cheerleader. It seems like a 80 or 90 years is a long time to live. I can spend that time learning how to make good use of my talent and to develop my capacity for living. I think the best skill one can achieve in life is the ability to live well - meaning love your neighbor, do virtue, find the meaning and purpose for living, and learn the art of contentment. Viktor Frankl, a Jew who survived a Nazi concentration camp, writes that he found freedom and liberation in the prison camp. With everything important to him taken away, including the very basic needs for survival, he found that no one could take away his freedom to feel and believe as he wished. He could choose not to hate his captors, regardless of their brutality. Yeah, get your brain around THAT one.

Whatever my future holds, I want to live it as well as I can. I have hope for a better life after this one. I think that maybe the things we learn here in this life prepare us for that one.

I took my teenage daughter to the top of my downtown building where I work. We looked down and saw all of the streets and intersections. You can see cars travelling down streets towards each other long before the drivers see each other. I told her that God sees us like this. We only see what is in front of our faces. But if you could gain the perspective of heaven on your life, you would see sooooo much more. Maybe that is the real answer to your question - look at your life from heaven's eyes.

I'm borrowing that line from a poem I once heard ... it seems to fit.

Answer 2

Your life may not be as short as you imagine it to be. Your life will never be the same as it is now. As you grow older your tastes and desires will probably change. You may be able to afford to maintain the lifestyle you enjoy today, but life is unpredictable. Tomorrow or the next day or next month, or some time other in the future may change drastically by circumstances not under your control. For example, if you have a dead end job at a medium salary and costs go up, there will come a time when you are not able to even live comfortably.

Answer 3

Life is as short or as long as we make it. It is surely better if we can enjoy it than to go around bitterly complaining about its poor quality. There are things we can do to improve quality of life and these need some planning. One does not change one's job, for example, without a certain amount of forethought and it is sensible to plan for the time when one no longer wishes to or can work. Having said that, whether one plans for the future or not has very little bearing on whether or not our life is fulfilled and enjoyable.

There are happy saints who take no thought for the morrow because they believe that their planning has been put into God's hands. There are also homeless alcoholics aplenty on our streets. Perhaps some are happy but I think they do not enjoy being that way. I have known many people whose life is planned down to the last detail and their retirement accounted for yet, when one talks to them, one has an impression of a certain lacklustre grimness. They take satisfaction in the orderliness of their lives and see the unexpected as annoying or inconvenient. They would say they are happy but I think I might not agree with their definition of it.

I have often noticed that the people who say life is short are the ones for whom life is always too short to stop and take pleasure in something, or to go out of their way to help another. The people I remember with gratitude and affection are those who had time to bring a little happiness into the lives of others. I don't think I ever heard them say that life was short.

The best strategy for life, I think, is to have a goal rather than a plan. Sometimes one needs a certain amount of planning to achieve that goal; very often the goal will require some sort of map, if only to indicate direction and paths which one should not follow. It's important to realise that, even those who live from day to day and do not appear to have a plan but do have a goal, nevertheless live their life by certain rules in order to achieve their goal.

Once one knows where one hopes to be by nightfall, one can set about enjoying the serendipities of life and exploring the little alleyways.

Answer 4

In the grand scheme of things, in universe time, the lifetime of one human being IS short. But 90 -- 100 years in our time ISN'T short. We need to plan so our future life, and the lives of our children and grandchildren will be comfortable while we are here on this earth.

Answer 5

Because short is relative. And everything is a great 'What If?'
Planning for the future is just looking at those what if's and choosing the ones you would rather have than others.

You don't know if the dinner is going to fill you up, but you will probably want to see the dessert options too.

Answer 6

When you are sitting in your house, sipping red wine and talking about how short life is, life is really short, but when you are homeless, have to worry about where your next meal will come from, or when you are unlucky, you end up in jail, living with murderers, rapists, child-molester, you will notice that life isn't really that short, that's why it's awfully important to plan for the future so that you don't have to experience how "long" life really is.

Answer 7

Because if you don't, others will plan your future for you. Just because life is "short" doesn't mean you shouldn't live it to the fullest. It's virtually impossible to live life to the fullest without proper planning.

Answer 8

Watch RENT and you won't want to plan anything. Just watch it, it's a GREAT movie!! Oh, and my opinion on the Question, Plan for the future so you don't end up living with your parents when your 30- like in Failure to Lanch, even though I don't know how old he was in the movie... anyway, back to what I was saying, WATCH RENT!!!! GOOD LUCK

Answer 9

if u said that ur dinner is very small and then can u live long time ,
it means that dont see ur future only see what happen now ?
enjoy yourself.enjoy every moment of the life.
it will give satisfaction in the your life.
so there is no need of the planning of the future.

Answer 10

Nobody really knows how long their life will be, so the best thing you can do is live it like every day is your last. But let's be real, right? When you plan, you have things to look forward to, things to LIVE for. When you don't plan, what's there to look forward to but another day of nothing. This is what I always say: FAILING TO PLAN IS PLANNING TO FAIL.....