Man Makes Plans, and God Laughs

The giant chestnut tree that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary, while hiding from the Nazis during World War II, crashed to the ground this week. While Frank and her family were hidden for more than two years, viewing the tree from the attic was her only respite from the cramped quarters.

Instead of cutting-down the fungal-infected, 150-year-old tree for safety reasons in 2007, officials built a steel support that was intended to keep the tree standing for up to fifteen years. However three years later a powerful storm took the tree down.

“Man makes plans, and God laughs.”—Yiddish proverb

This proves that while we busily make plans, the Universe, God, Source, Reality, or whatever you choose to call it, pays no heed. What will be, will be. That was again proven to me last week when I moved my Mom to Brampton from Ottawa and numerous things went “wrong”.

Or did they?

Certainly, they did not go as “planned,” but does that make them “wrong”?

Now, instead of Frank’s single tree standing with the support of steel, saplings from the tree have been planted in an Amsterdam park and other cities around the world. Is anything truly good or bad?

Does planning have any effect? Planning has value, but it doesn’t have any effect. Why can’t things stay the same? If a rose’s scent never faded, all you’ve ever smell is rose…which would mean there’s be no scent of a rose. If people had control, and if things never changed, it would be a strange world indeed.

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Cindy Teevens is the author of The Alchemy of Love and Joy™. In May of 2009, the practice came through her own suffering and later discovery of joy, and it emerged and took form in words, to help someone else.  Her life has become happy and often ecstatic with the most simple things. She is excited to continue this adventure and wonders just how good it can become as she practices allowing more and more joy. She encourages the world to—Seek Joy!