writings

<n>Unplanned Plans</n>, a blackout poem by <n>Austin Kleon</n>.

You will receive a body. You may like it or not but it is yours for the entire time you’re on Earth. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called “life.” Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much as the process as the experiment that ultimately works. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. Then you can go on to the next lesson. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned. “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that is, again, better than “here.” Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need – what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. You will forget all this. You can remember whenever you want.