Plans

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference. 

In Twelve Step programs, where there is an emphasis on living in the present moment, people are encouraged not to hash over the past or worry and fret about the future. You are told to leave things in the hands of a loving and caring Higher Power.

Sometimes a person asks, "Well, what about making plans for the future? Is that a problem?"

And a typical response is, "Plan plans, don't plan results."

Which means, plan what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, but you have to leave the outcome in the hands of said Higher Power. You do your part as best you can -- that is the "change the things I can" part of the Serenity Prayer -- and accept what comes -- the "accept the things I cannot change" part. And please, never forget to do the wisdom part!

I thought of this because of a political ad I have seen the last couple of days talking about one of the candidate's plans for Wisconsin. The plan consists of generating 240,000 new jobs, cutting the debt by X amount and so on. This, I suggest, is not a plan. This is (or would be) one possible result of carrying out a plan. The canddate, in this ad and to be honest elsewhere, says nothing about how s/he plans to create jobs or cut the debt or anything else. The plan is that things will be better.

I have a plan for Wisconsin. My plan is to insure every child, underemployed adult and elder in the state. My plan is to provide every child with the finest education in the world. My plan is to do away with the  state's debt and build a comfortable surplus that can be used to repair the crumbling infrastructure. My plan is to make sure every citizen votes. My plan is to ...

That is not a plan. That is (or might be) desired outcomes (In the chart above, the goals.). The plan is an organized  outline of what you are going to do, moving you in a particular direction towards the accomplishments of some goals. The candidate in question has goals. As far as I can tell, pretty much no one would argue with the goals. What the ad needs to tell us is how we are to get there. We all want to get to heaven. The question is which road leads there.