Above: 'Of Mice and Men', it was this specific edition of the book (Written by John Steinbeck and cover designed by Ross Macdonald) that I read three times in school!
Best laid plans.
In Year 10 we studied a book called ‘Of Mice and Men.’ for our English qualification, this post isn’t about that book. Truth be told, I liked the book... until I’d read it 3 times and analysed every sentence! I'm not exactly a super fan but it was, however, through this book that I discovered one of my favorite sayings, ‘The best laid plans of mice and men, gang aft agley.’ This saying translates to ‘The best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry’ which roughly means: ‘Even the most well-made plans, with the best intentions, whether the plans of the mighty or meek, often do not go to plan!’. This saying comforts me, it reminds me that no-one’s journey on earth is ever straight-forward, regardless of your intentions. Isn’t it nice to know that even those people who appear to have it all up together have off days!?
The book ‘Of Mice and Men’ is a Depression era American tragedy and very few things in the book go to plan. My life has also often gone ‘awry’. That being said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. If you had asked me, even a few months ago, how my life would be now, I would definitely have been wrong! It seems to me that any and all plans I make seldom go the way I imagined.
As I’ve written before, living with OCD and various Anxiety disorders, as well as the Tourette’s, means that I struggle with plans in general. I struggle to make loose plans, I struggle to keep to plans and I REALLY struggle when things don’t go to plan! I like to obsessively plan, I could spend hours timetabling and mind-mapping minute details of my life, in fact, I often do! The problem is, the more detailed and complex the plan, the easier it is to derail (or at least to make me feel as though it has been!)
I would like to consider myself quite a ‘happy-go-lucky’ kind of person who is relatively unfazed by life’s ups and downs… The truth, however, is that sometimes something as small as a car journey taking slightly longer than I’d planned is enough to send me into a bit of a panic (especially on a bad day)! This quote does not comfort me on those days, I don’t care about the plans of mice and men! I want my plans to work out! This quote helps when thing go wrong - BIG TIME.
When little things go wrong I can move on relatively easily but when things go very wrong it’s a different story. I have a tendency to blame myself for things no one could have possibly predicted -like having Tourette’s! I know that, logically, I cannot control everything, not everything is my choice and somethings are simply unavoidable, but that doesn’t make ‘going with the flow’ any easier! Sometimes it can feel
like things go wrong as a result of my presumably cursed presence and that is when this quote helps me.
As I write this, my head is not in the best of places. The car has broken down and we’re stuck at service station. I’m not going to lie, I’m panicking. It’s not that it will be the end of the world if I am late home tonight, it’s just that it feels like it! It’s at moments like these that I try to remember good old ‘gang aft agley’ and often it helps. I have no reason to worry, after all in 7 years’ time I won’t even have the same cells that are stuck here right now! I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t sweat the small stuff. If it’s supposed to work out, it will, and if it doesn’t? Well, remember ‘The best laid plans of mice and men, gang aft agley.’