The Accidental Prophet
“A wish is not a goal, and hope is not a plan.”
I have a friend, a very close friend, who says that whenever I speak of the future, I already know what’s going to happen. One year. Five years. Ten. Every step and every stage, all mapped out, in my head and then, into words. Thoughtful. Methodical. Concise.
Except I swear that, every time it happens, I have no conscious idea that what I’ve just said is, in fact, a plan.
So unbelieving am I that, after my friend who hears recites my future future back to me, I am left scrunch-faced, my head shaking, saying, “What are you talking about? That wasn’t a plan, that was just wishful thinking.” And yet, in the two years of our friendship, apparently, I’ve never been wrong.
And it pisses me off every time.
It would seem that I hate being right.
If I were to put it in terms that I could understand, I would call myself, “The Accidental Prophet”.
Over the last year alone, I called my shot about creating a job out of two other jobs so that I would have all the time in the world to sit undisturbed and, on company time, with the boss’ blessing, write another book. That happened. Before that, I called my shot about taking ten years of chicken-scratched poems, and publishing a first book. That happened, too. Somewhere in between the first book and the job, I said something about creating a publishing company and, yeah… yeah… whatever.
Now, says my friend, I’ve been saying things again. Future kind of things. The kind that, if you were to ask me, I wouldn’t call anything more than a few nice ideas. A wish here, a hope there. Just spitballing into the wind. And if I didn’t have the big-eared friend with the over-developed sense interpreting irony in all its forms, I might dismiss these, too.
Except now, I can’t. Because I know better than to argue with a plan, even when I don’t know it’s a plan until comes true.
And all I can say right now is, if it’s true, 2017 is going to be a hell of a year. And if none of it comes true, well like I said, I hate being right, so I’ll be the first to tell you I was wrong. But if by accident I was right, I’ll be writing another one of these next year.
Complete with the “I told you so” from my friend who hears.
© Copyright 2017 William S. Friday
