Alternative Campgrounds and Choices

We can remain hopeful in realizing that there are always good things to come if we’re willing to see it, work toward it, and embrace the wonderful people that we will be privileged to meet along the way.

I’ve never been very good at giving people bad news. I suppose that it isn’t necessarily an easy task for most of us but I hoped that I might have gotten a little bit better at it after 13 years of working as a public affairs specialist. But despite all of the training and experience. I still so much prefer to try to figure out a way for people to get as much of what they want as possible. I’ve run up against the challenge the last couple of weeks, though, because I’ve had to explain to many people that they’re camping reservations have been canceled due to early snow necessitating them to come up with alternative plans.

I’ve done my very best to explain the reasoning for the delay in opening campgrounds and I’ve also tried to help these folks who might have made their reservations months in advance to come up with other campgrounds that might still meet their needs. Because of this, I can’t help but think about how many times in our lives things just don’t work out according to plan. Relationships fall apart, great job interviews don’t end up with jobs materializing, weekend getaways fall through, sports teams lose games, and even our most trusted and reliable friends and mentors occasionally let us down.

So what do we do with that? Certainly the solution to this is not to lose all hope and trust in humanity or the world. But how can we navigate through those hard times needing to rely on some certainties while also being brutally aware that such plans are not guarantees.

The best solution I’ve come up with so far in my life is to have viable contingency plans for when things don’t work out the way we originally hope. That way, we don’t have to scramble to find an alternative – realizing that scrambling inevitably leads to worse outcomes than we would have enjoyed had we planned ahead – and we can still enjoy some similar experiences to what we envisioned even if things might be slightly different than we originally thought.

And to be honest, it’s often been the unexpected and the unplanned adventures that have ended up being the most fulfilling and meaningful. Those rainy camping trips or those road trips where your planned destination ended up being closed, those dream jobs that we set our minds on but somehow never open up or at least never open up for us. All of these and so many more so-called misfortunes can actually be flipped around to become some of the most rewarding experiences. I’m not naïve to the challenge that broken plans can pose, but I do believe, however, that there are healthy ways of working through those fallen through plans. 

Here is the formula that I use in a nutshell:

1. I try not to set in place too many details when I’m first starting out with the plan. I Layout the framework and some of the major details, but, to use the road trip analogy again, I don’t set my mind on one specific route to my destination or one specific restaurant that I absolutely have to eat at, or even lay out all of the attractions that I am planning on seeing or experiencing. Instead, I layout a possible route. I do a little bit of research of some possible restaurants along the way that sound good. And then a try to set in place at least one or maybe two big rock activities or attractions that I really want to experience each day. And then I leave a lot of room for serendipity. This way of doing road trips may not appeal to everybody but I think that the usefulness of this strategy could extend beyond just planning road trips. If I had held doggedly and singularly to the professional track that I thought would lead to the most fulfillment and success that I had in my mind when I graduated from high school, I would be in a very different place than I am today. And maybe if I had stuck to that plan, some good things might have come out of it. I certainly wouldn’t have had a number of the positive experiences that I am so grateful that I’ve had now and I definitely wouldn’t know a lot of the wonderful people that I’ve gotten to know because I’ve been willing to pivot as opportunities have arisen.

2. I don’t necessarily need Plan B or C or D for every component of planning but those large benchmark points in time I found it to be awfully helpful to already know where I’ll turn if and when certain doors don’t open quite as readily as I originally thought. And laying out alternatives, I think it’s super important that we think logically about what alternatives would actually be good and rewarding and enjoyable rather than having one chosen path that has everything we’ve ever dreamed of and then a series of alternatives that aren’t even close to those shining Plan A’s. 

There are always strengths to the choices that we don’t take. When I was in elementary school, I had my mind set on becoming a brain surgeon. There would have certainly been some great components to being a brain surgeon. By my age today, I would actually be done with school even completing my residency and fellowships and at this point in my life I would be a full-fledged fully functional brain surgeon that would probably be making a fair amount more than I making right now salary wise. I could also help people in some very significant ways. When I realized that that door would be awfully difficult to open due to my brain injury, I soon realized that there were so many other wonderful avenues to help people, make a decent living, and make a difference for the people in my community and my country. Because I chose a different path, different opportunities presented themselves along the way. Opportunities to meet different people who I would have never met otherwise. Beloved friends who I care so much about now, who I can’t imagine living without today, I would have absolutely missed out knowing if I had chosen a different path. I would have different people in my life if I had chosen a different path. Other wonderful people who I’m sure I would feel very similarly about to the people that I care so much about today. That’s why I don’t regret going with alternative plans: because I’ve learned to appreciate the fact that there are so many wonderful things just around the corner for anybody who is willing to commit to whatever plan they choose. Regret can be a dangerous thing, because if we dwell too much on the path we haven’t chosen, it can take away from the enjoyment and the full experience of the path we are on.

3. The last step I follow when I have to change my trajectory when my plans don’t work out perfectly is, once I’ve made a decision on an alternative path I consider the old path gone. I do this because even if the door we wanted to go through eventually does open for us later we are living in a different reality and so some pretty significant differences present themselves with our original plan and so in a lot of ways it makes that decision-making process new again. But I also close the door on the original plan if I’ve chosen an alternative plan because as soon as I make my mind up and decide on the alternative, I get to start enjoying right away all of the advantages that that new alternative plan can present me with. With any significant decision in life there are always pros and cons. We try to make the best decision we can based on the best information that is available to us at any given time. But even the best laid plan is not perfect. There are certain things that we wish were different. And so if we decide that it’s best for us to go with an alternative, we get to look at some of those pros that we were willing to forgo with our original plan. Eventually, by the time I’ve headed down the alternative path very far at all, my mindset has shifted so much that for most intents and purposes the alternative path might as well be considered the only part that I’ve ever wanted to head down. This also helps me avoid heading down paths of regret.

Of course, this is only one way of making decisions. All of us have different methods that work best for each of us individually. But one thing that I think could be somewhat universal is the reality of there being good things even when we face disappointment at having our first choice not turn out according to plan. We can mourn what is lost. We can grieve for a time that certain doors remain closed. But we can also remain hopefully in realizing that there are always good things to come if we’re willing to see it, work toward it, and embrace the wonderful people that we will be privileged to meet along the way.