|
|
|
| |||||||
| ||||||||
| Home | Contents | MediaStream ↑News+Blog↑ |
Entities | Newsletters | Book | Philosophy | Photos | Glenn Campbell |
 |
The Case Against Marriage
A Book in Progress by Glenn Campbell “Read it or weep!” Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Production Notes This is a ROUGH DRAFT of a book that still needs a lot of work. I have set it aside for now but expect to come back to it later Your feedback is encouraged, but I recognize that the chapters don't yet flow together as they should. FamilyCourtGuy<at>gmail.com |
Right now, you probably have some long-term personal goals, and you may have mapped out a logical straight-line path to achieve them. Step "A" will lead you to Step "B" followed by Step "C" leading to your major goal at Step "D", where you expect a lot of kudos and congratulations. Maybe you envision going to college, followed by medical school, followed by residency, followed by opening your own medical practice in the small town where you grew up. As you stand here at the beginning of your journey, your itinerary may seem clear. The only trouble is that real life may step in and throw a monkey wrench into your plans.
First of all, there will be misfortune. The chance of any one disaster striking you is probably low, but when you add up all the possible things that can go wrong, you can be sure that something bad is going to happen to you within the next few years. You could be crippled in a car accident. A family member might become gravely ill and need your care. You might not get accepted into medical school. No matter how solid your plans may be, there are are rich variety of things that can go wrong.
Secondly, the goal you were originally seeking may begin to lose its luster with time. The more you learn about yourself and your goal, the more you may see that this destination isn't for you. In high school, you might have dreamed of being a doctor, but as you watch real doctors doing their jobs, you may begin to see them as slaves to HMOs and insurance companies. Maybe in college, you find yourself drawn to different interests that lead you elsewhere.
Thirdly, there will be unexpected opportunities. Through no plan of yours, you may meet someone, read something or stumble into a random situation that completely changes your perspective and starts you down a different road.
Change, by its nature, is unpredictable. You don't know today what tomorrow's changes will be. Change doesn't always move in a straight line based on today's trends, and of course it does not respect our wishes. Whether a hurricane strikes our city is not affected by whether we have bought real estate there. Hurricanes obey their own rules, independent of our intentions.
You can protect yourself against some forms of disaster, but not all. You can insure your home against hurricane damage but not against a collapse in the real estate market. People think they can protect themselves from change by putting more locks on their doors, visiting their doctor every six months and buying insurance against every possible financial disaster, but change is going to sneak in anyway.
The only thing certain about life is there will be change. Things will happen that you never expected, and when they do, you can treat them either as disasters or opportunities. You can either embrace change or fight it.
If you try to fight change, you're eventually going to lose. To embrace change, you have to be ready to adapt to it gracefully when it happens. As you look ahead, you have to recognize that you won't know the future until it happens. You can plan for a range of possible future events but not every possible contingency. You can't play a game and know its outcome before it begins.
You can't plan on specific changes happening. What you can do, however, is leave yourself open to change by allowing yourself as much future freedom as possible. When disasters or opportunities happen, you need to be able to adapt to them with as little prior hindrance as possible.
Preserving your freedom means limiting your long-term contracts to those that are truly necessary. It is harder to adapt to changing circumstances when you have already committed yourself to being somewhere two years or twenty years from now. Preserving freedom also means crafting a practical life that is clear of unnecessary distractions and excess baggage. It is harder to adapt if you have a house full of useless possessions, a garden that needs to be watered and pets that need to be fed. To be best prepared for unexpected change, your life needs to be as lean and efficient as possible. You want to be a lean, mean, change-embracing machine.
Embracing change means appreciating it as a valuable source of health and growth, probably more healthy than any straight-line route. Sometimes the worst possible outcome is to obtain exactly the prize you had been seeking. "Be careful what you wish for because it might come true." Sometimes the best possible event, in the greater arc of your life, is an ugly disaster that smashes all of your dreams to bits.
No one wants to see a beautiful forest destroyed by fire, but such a disaster is sometimes necessary to make way for new growth. A catastrophe can sometimes clear out all the "dead wood" of your life and force you to rethink what is really important. If your house burns down with all your possessions inside, you may discover that you never really needed them. Maybe they were an unnecessary burden that hindered your growth in more important areas.
Campbell's Second Law is this: "Your life is bigger than you are."
What I mean by this is that your whole life may have a direction and complexity that is beyond your ability to grasp right now. You can attribute this position to a higher being if you want, by saying that "God has a plan for you" bigger than the problems front of you. You don't have to believe in God, however, to believe that there is a higher intelligence and bigger mission to your life than you can see right now.
You obviously want to avoid catastrophes. You should always fasten your seat belt and drive safely to make accidents less likely. If, in spite of your best efforts, misfortune strikes anyway, you ought to be philosophical about it. To best deal with unexpected change, you have to perceive it as "part of the plan."
Even if your whole family has been killed in a car accident and you have been paralysed by it, you are still going to find a source of strength in the event. In the end, you have to believe that it will make you a better person.
Continued in Chapter 21
|
©2005-07, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las
Vegas, NV 89173.
This is an independent and unofficial website. All opinions expressed are those of the webmaster and not any other party. Information conveyed here is accurate to the best of our knowledge but is not guaranteed. You should seek your own independent verification of critical information. Total page hits at FamilyCourtChronicles.com: |
