We learn, as adults, to plan ahead: Organize your life, be productive, use your time wisely. Get an education, get a job, get a better job, have children, have more children, buy a house, buy a better house. And in those middle, sandwich years, it’s generally good advice. There so much to do, best if you do it smarter. But all the list making, planning, and organizing that make life richer and more productive can devolve into worrying and spinning your mental wheels. So much so that instead of providing more time to do things, there’s less.

Thus, as I get older (and the time to plan ahead gets shorter) I come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t be planning ahead so much. Not that that means looking backward only, though hopefully I’ve learned some good lessons from a long life. And not that that means not looking forward, because there are plenty of new things yet to come. (A lot of NOTS, I guess, but sometimes nothing is something.)

But fewer plans and fewer worries: Maybe just living in the moment, whatever that moment is. Not fighting whatever it is that we’re contending with, such as my husband’s substantial aches and pains, or my chronic itch and, now that a dermatologist has gone all out to treat it with a super-potent topical steroid, heart palpitations.

Not everything has to be fixed.

So, not planning. Just being. In any case, it is what it is.

Or is it?