Living with Black Swans.

I'm reading a book right now called The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It's several hundred pages, but John Lennon was able to make the same point in one line:

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

And some people only need two words:

"S--t happens." (A phrase, I hate, by the way, not for its meaning, just for its utterly uncreative, crass, ugly choice of words.)

The point? Our lives are determined by what we don't expect, i.e., Black Swans.

To be clear, Black Swans are neither good nor bad, they are simply unexpected. You will also most likely see more than one in your lifetime, as they are NOT unlikely, just, again, unexpected.

And so, as we plan, hope and pray, we will, at some point, be hit by something we do not see coming. For me, it was a tile wall (a pink tile, sadly, as a black tile would have been much cooler, considering the whole Black Swan theme).

What to do about Black Swans? Nothing. I'm still going to plan, to hope, to do my best to change what I can in my life for the better, even though, a Black Swan might fly by and poop on me at its whim. I'm also going to continue working very hard to live in the moment, which, I admit sets up another odd animal, the pushmi-pullyu.

How can one both plan for the future and live in the moment? Not sure, really. You just do it. Besides, as a pushmi-pullyu, you can see Black Swans coming at you — and chasing you down.