Keep Going

REFLECTIONS & LESSONS

Keep Going

So many of life’s lessons don’t happen in a classroom or through a book. They happen through experience. Through trials. Through the unplanned moments that stop you in your step.

We’ve heard the phrase: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” But what if it’s not?

We’ve been told to follow the steps. Trust the process. If it falls apart, go to Plan B; the backup plan. If that doesn’t work, try Plan C: the contingency plan. But what if failing is part of Plan A?

I was yardening, as I call it, one afternoon — shoveling soil, working with the land, tending to what needed tending — when I heard rustling in the branches above. I looked up and saw a baby squirrel, frozen, watching its parent jump back and forth between branches. Back and forth. Again and again. Showing it, teaching it, what to do.

I’ve seen generations use this tree highway, but never the lesson. I called my wife over. We witnessed together.

Eventually, the parent jumped and didn’t come back. It was then that the baby squirrel leaped — trusting what it had seen, what it had learned, what it already knew. Because it was still in training, it fell. It landed on the log pile below, stunned for a split second. Then got up, ran up the same tree it had fallen from, and kept going.

I lost sight of both of them after that. I don’t know if it made that jump on the way back that day. But I know it got up, and I know it kept going.

My grandmother lived 95 full years. She worked full-time as a nurse, raised four kids with my grandfather in a country they hadn’t grown up in, and somehow still found room for countless hobbies along the way. Her journey on this earth ended one year ago. What I keep returning to, what is whispered in the wind, what she embodied without ever making it a motto, was simply this: keep going.

She didn’t have it all planned out. She had faith. And lots of it. Through the unplanned and unexpected, the moves and careers, the losses and blooms that no roadmap could have anticipated, she lived her way to a full life.

The baby squirrel didn’t fail because it fell. It was still in training. It had watched and learned, and when the moment came, it took a leap of faith. It lived. The fall became part of the education. Getting up was part of the plan.

What if we allowed ourselves to see our missteps the same way? Not as evidence of poor planning, but as part of the experience itself. The thing that teaches what no classroom can.

Nature doesn’t issue contingency plans. It simply continues — navigating, finding a way, and oriented toward the light. Perhaps failing to plan shouldn’t be seen as a problem. Perhaps the plan was just the step before the leap.

Whatever comes next, keep going.

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FROM THE PRACTICE

There’s No Place Like Home

A reflection, invitation, and reading from the song Home Sweet Home by John Howard Payne.

[An invitation to keep an open heart → There’s No Place Like Home]

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