‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face’

There’s a stretch of road I know in the northeast of Scotland that I have always enjoyed driving along. Whenever I'm there, I want to pump the music up and put my foot down. It's dead straight and flat for the entire way, allowing me to spot any danger with nothing but fields and woods on either side. I can clearly see my destination ahead. Pedal to the metal time! However, I repeatedly forget what I have learned before. This road is not as it first appears. Deceptively, the flat surface is alarmingly bumpy. It always has been. Within moments, the car lurches and bounces. Backseat passengers get particularly upset about this I have found. It’s weird. I know this, yet I forget.

It’s been a funny old month or two. Not funny, ha ha. Regular readers might recall my musings in May revolved around being away on holiday, which was indeed the plan. I updated via the comments that we cancelled last minute after my mother-in-law’s health suddenly deteriorated. It was the right decision; she passed away on Coronation Day.

To round things off, we learned a little too late that Covid had secretly ravaged the hospital ward, latching itself on patients and visitors alike. We were among its prey. Being struck down with the lurgy isn’t ideal when there’s a funeral to arrange. One minute, we were cruising along a straight stretch of tarmac, blasting out the tunes, and the next we were lurching and bouncing on unseen bumps.

Life doesn’t always go according to plan. Sun Tzu, the Chinese general who was way ahead of his time with snappy sound bites, knew this. ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’ is his famous piece of wisdom on military warfare. Or, as Mike Tyson paraphrased, ‘everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.’ I’ve always said he’s underrated as a philosopher.

Life has delivered a couple of glancing blows. Nothing out of the ordinary. We are still on our feet.

In recent times, one of my favourite books is ‘There Are No Strong People’ by Jeff Lucas. It expounds the story of Samson, the famous strongman. You may know him as the man whose shoulders were three hundred feet broad and whose single stride was two miles long! What a man.

I won’t seek to precis Lucas’s excellent book here, but the key takeaway is “there are no strong people, only people with strengths.”

If there is one mistake I make on repeat, it is this. I look at most of the people I know in person and online, assume that all is well in their life and that they are strong. Social media adds to this with its constant feed of ‘here I am again, having a great time, smashing it’. Nobody is having another ordinary day with bumps in the road. It’s not just social media, though. My formative Christian years were subject to a constant feed from men in leadership positions (it was all men) telling me how to be strong like them. Words like conquering and overcoming were firm favourites. Direct and indirect condemnation of pitiful, weak sinners got meted out. The preaching informed me their lives were one long, straight line of success because they were strong and had everything sorted out. I never once heard of their struggles, doubts, or failures. I’m sure they meant well, but it wasn’t for me.

Maybe you’ve hit some bumps in your life or in your writing and you're a little bruised or broken. You are among friends. Don’t be fooled by appearances.

“There are people with strengths, but there are no strong people. Except One.”

Jeff Lucas