Do those who have their futures mapped out appall you?

Question

How do you feel when your friends around you imagine about the future? Do you wish you were one of them? Or are you fine living in the moment?

Answer 1

Well, no. I think it's always a good idea to have a map. HOWEVER, I think it's really important to realize that the map and the real road might be different. It's important to pay attention and take advantage of detours and be flexible when your road has a huge pothole in it that wasn't on the map.

It's when people take the map too seriously that they get into trouble. When they cling to it despite the fact that nothing on the map matches the actual ground they are travelling. THAT is appalling.

Have a map, but live in the moment, that's my motto! (-:

Answer 2

I had my future all mapped out when I was in high school.

Three careers and two serious illnesses later, I have come to realize that it's good to have dreams, but dreams are not the same as a reliable map.

Living for the moment is fine, as long as you don't destroy your future in the process. Planning your future is also fine, as long as you are flexible enough to deal with the fact that things don't often go as planned.

Reality tends to require a mixture of living for the moment, and planning for the future. Too much of either is unhealthy in my opinion.

Answer 3

No, because I'm one of those people who try to map things out. Starting to realize you just can't do that. You can plan, but things change.

Answer 4

I mapped my future out when I was at least 10 years old. I would think in bed before sleeping how I could leave home and yet earn enough to survive. I needed training that would see me through just about any country, and that would not take too long. At 16 I was on a cargo boat to Denmark with my bicycle. I worked in a family as a mother's helper. I went to night school in Copenhagen, on my bike, 3 nights for household management/cooking/nutrition, and 2 nights for Danish language. On my day off I learnt Danish embroidery, which has given me and surrounding people much pleasure, I won 1st prize in UK, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland in design and embroidery. I came back home, became depressed (my mother was unloving, unsupporting, cruel) so I left after being offered a job in Lyon, France, by the Danish girl who was leaving her job with a family in Lyon. I took the job and worked there 6 months, and practiced my French on the children I looked after. (I am still in contact with the members of the French family, and my children have stayed with them individually). Then I came back home and worked in a Travel Agents' office, and after two years went into training to become a registered nurse, I was 21 by then. After working as a Staff Nurse I became a Pan Am Stewardess, a glamorous job and flew all over the world, based in NY. Fell in love with a Turk in Istanbul, married, had a boy baby. But the husband was jealous, and totally controlling, wouldn't allow visitors or use of phone, and we lived in Turkey. I had to pack it in, get a divorce, which was very complicated. Recover, work as a nurse in my native town near my parents, and raise my son. Then I left for the States, worked 7 days a week, brought my son over when he was 3.2, married a medical doctor when my son was 6, put him through a second residency, had a girl baby, helped husband start his office, in NJ. He became very successful and he started seeing other women after we'd been married 28 years......got divorced! I was married 31 years as it took 3+ to obtain the divorce. My children were emancipated.
Left NJ and went to CA. worked in Special Services for a wellknown airline, and on vacation (painting and drawing in Guadalajarra) decided to resign my job, find a Colonial town in Mexico and Colonial CASA, 300 yrs old and have a B&B. This I had for 7 years, and as I really liked to cook, it was a pleasurable phase of my adventuress life. My kids, a son, a daughter and an adopted Korean daughter are grown. I never neglected them, I taught them kindness, manners, values and a knowledge of foods and the world.The bio kids are professional, my son is an International lawyer with 10 languages, I mean grammatically correct, and my daughter is an actress, was one of 2nd City's biggies, and now is in Hollywood and had speaking parts in five movies.
I am now restoring colonial houses in Mexico, and I am writing short stories. Life is hard and it is exciting, I am never bored. Also, I have a very wonderful man in my life, he's American. But yes, I planned because I needed to leave home and be able to support myself, be safe, yet become professional, be a good mother/wife all the way down the pathway of life.....may you plan well, but do take side roads when offered.

Answer 5

You can't possibly know the future, except where you are going when you die. You can have a "plan", but how often do things go according to plan? Best thing is to know where you are going.