F*ck The 5-Year Plan.
{source}
We are taught to plan.
Do well in school for college.
Well in college for work.
Well at work for,
whatever.
Because then
you have babies
and work becomes guilt
when you leave them.
And you get married
for Christmas cards
and insurance discounts
and your parents.
I live alone now.
I’m not married anymore.
My college degree is lost
in a shuffle of old paperwork,
assigned no more value
than the moments I collected
in its pursuit.
I left a big house
and a man who didn’t understand me
for an apartment atop Black Mountain,
and joint custody.
I have no plans past the holidays
and it is probably the best space
I have ever been in.
I hardly remember who I used to be.
I was always clawing to get out.
This freedom – vulnerable to myself
with you,
in circle,
but also out loud.
All at once.
I have lost the brakes.
But instead of fearing it,
I am screaming,
“Yes!!! Faster, faster!”
Because no plan I’ve ever made
compares to the surrender of not knowing.
Not knowing is better
than any plans I could have made.
To plan is to assign an arbitrary deadline to your happiness.
I see still-frames of a girl
with my eyes but no smile.
Hallways and parties,
fluorescent lights and libraries
and searching
and never finding.
Because I was looking for myself in someone elses dream.
Why do we trust the mouths
of those who wish to satisfy
their own longings with our victories?
And drown their own sorrows in our songs?
Why do we accept what we are told?
Why are we so goddamned obedient to man,
and so deaf to our own spirit?
The spirit knows.
The part that is connected
more to God,
and less to the professor.
More a part of the sky
and less a part of the story.
We hear the spirit speak.
All of us do.
But we sign up for extra credit
or the next heartbreak
instead of listening.
We beg for distraction.
We make plans.
Fuck the 5-year plan.
I never saw one through anyhow.
I want to board a train
in the direction of love.
I don’t know where it will go,
how it will meander.
I don’t know if it provides a 401K.
I didn’t read the reviews.
I want to wake up on this train,
and every day,
listen to the guidance
of my spirit.
In surrender,
it is integrating
with the spirit of God,
of you, of all.
I want to ask my spirit
where it wants to go today.
I don’t want to force it
to subscribe to false ideals of safety
that are nothing but words.
(God didn’t make the words.)
I want to measure my success
by the peace in my heart.
I want to count my wealth in friends.
I want to live in a constant state
of inspiration.
Be it sorrowful or joyous,
be it real.
I have ripped through the stitching
of a life not meant for me.
I will not be relegated
to someone else’s dream.
I am awake now,
and there is nothing
that can stop me.
I am love.
I am power.
I am free.
I hardly remember the rest.
*****
Erin Sophia writes because her truth is exposed before her at the keyboard. Pieces of soul found in meditation or trauma-review, given life with the stroke of the pin, rhythm of the keyboard. She is a seeker, a lover, a mother, a heart-on-her-sleeve poet who takes great delight in telling her fears to fuck off. As she continues to rip apart the ‘shoulds’ in life, she finds herself more enthralled with the here, the now, the truth that ‘if it isn’t love, it isn’t real’. And by ‘love’, she doesn’t always mean flowers and rainbows. Love is truth, and the relentless pursuit to follow where it goes. For her, that has meant leaving the illusive security of things like corporate America and a misaligned marriage. With her heart as her compass and God as her North, she wakes each day to explore, master, and share her work in labor and birth, death and dying, and the thin veil in-between, by use of language powered by love.
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