Life as we know it.

There's a saying... "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."  This is normally only somewhat true.  You make plans, and then follow through with them. Your life follows the plans that you make.  Other people's lives might interact with your plans, but for the most part, the other 8 billion people on this planet don't care what your plans are.  But occasionally, your life doesn't follow through because someone else, someone you've never met, had a plan that either came to fruition, or failed completely, and the effect of that is to totally ruin your plans.

Six degree of Kevin Bacon, one of my favorite games.
But the basic concept displayed here affects us all, all the time.

This affect is most common when there's an accident, say a drunk driver hitting someone's car, thus causing untold carnage.  But occasionally, it's not quite as malicious as drunk driving.  Sometimes, it's a lifetime of bad choices, or at the least, not the healthiest of choices, that cause things to go awry.  And in the end, the those choices don't just affect you.  These choices affect everyone around you, your family, most obviously.  But also your friends, and their friends, too.  It's a six degrees of separation type thing.  For example, "Bob" decides that jumping off the roof is a good idea.  In doing so, he breaks both his legs.  His family is affected because they've come to realize their son is a moron, and now have to take care of the idiot for his stupidity.  His friends are affected because they realize their friend has no concept of reality.  But they're his friend so they stick by him.  Their friends are affected because they have to have the conversations about this stupidity of the action and lose precious time in their lives to this inane act and now have to change their own plans because someone they barely know jumped off a roof and they missed the 5 o'clock matinee movie they wanted to see having a pointless conversation about the stupid action.  Now, this is a silly and completely ridiculous example, that has unfortunately been done too many times (see youtube)  But more serious examples are there to be found.

I'm currently in one of those situations.  A man whom I've never met, made a lifetime of choices.  Be they good or bad, I don't know.  As I've said, I don't know the man.  But his choices affected his children, one of whom I know.  This has caused the person I know a great deal of pain and suffering.  I don't know how to console my friend.  I don't know what to do.  And now I'm sitting here contemplating the situation when I should be doing what I had planned today.  Oh, and on the scale of irrelevant things at this point, the fact that  my plans for the ENTIRE week are now impossible because of this, is a 1 (being not relevant at all when human lives are in the balance). So I have to change my plans, big whoop.  Yet I'm put out because of it and I feel the affects.  It angers me that I have to change my plans.  This was a week I had been looking forward to for two months.  And yet, the fact that I feel anger, angers me even more.  I don't know why I feel anger.  Well, I do know why, and it's a stupid reason compared to the reason why I have to cancel my week.  There will be other opportunities to do what I had planned this week.  Yet because I had to wait for this week to get here, I don't want to wait again.  Or have to make plans again.

Julio Iglesias.  One of my
mom's favorite musical artists

I'm much more of a spontaneous person.  Making plans is not my forte.  And this is exactly why I don't.  Because when you have to change your plans at the last minute, it really puts a hurting on the rest of your life, at least in the short term.  When you make last minute plans, and they don't go through, you've wasted little in the way of time and energy making those plans, so little is lost.  But when it's a long term plan, and you have to cancel the plans, you've spent countless hours in the planning that have thusly been ruined.  I remind myself of the time when I was a kid, and I was playing street hockey.  I ended up taking a stick to the face that caused deep cuts on my forehead and nose.  This seemingly innocuous activity, then caused my dad to have to take me to the ER in order to get stitches.  He had to miss the Julio Iglesias concert he was going to with my mother that night.  I know my mom had been looking forward to that night for a long time, and she probably didn't enjoy it as much as she could have if I hadn't been stupid and hurt myself.  Although my dad probably was grateful for not having to sit through the concert.

Perhaps one day, I'll again do the same thing to someone else. It's more than likely.  My lifetime of choices will undoubtedly cause me to do something and affect my son, who in turn affects those around him, and so on. In this way, it's like a gift that keeps on giving.  Because we're human and we learn from not only our mistakes but other's mistakes as well, we can avoid these things.  But, we're also human, and invariably, we ignore those lessons and do what we want to do anyways.  Thus the cycle perpetuates itself.