Did you choose your life, or did life choose you?

Not many of us end up where we plan to be. But, is it such a bad thing for plans not to work out? There is no clear answer to this.

HOW many of us can honestly say life has gone exactly per plan and is what we always wanted it to be? Ask around and most will tell you the same story - how they spent a lifetime planning for a career and when it came to the crux, they realized it wasn't something they wanted after all. Or, sometimes what you plan just never works out. How many brides and bridegrooms have had last minute change of hearts?

Did former model and now roadside derelict Gitanjali Nagpal imagine in her heyday that she would be walking the streets in a short while? She possibly planned to be where her contemporaries Sushmita Sen or Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are today.

But, wait a minute. Did even Sushmita and Aishwarya meticulously plan the lives they are living today? No, it doesn't seem so. Sushmita apparently had limited her choices to poet, doctor, linguist, journalist or being a Mother Teresa, and Aishwarya wanted to be an architect! And while Ash's life may well seem every girl's dream come true, her own littlegirl dreams were of blueprints and buildings rather than the Miss Universe crown and Bachchan bahudom!

True, not many of us end up where we plan to be. Consider this. Saif Ali Khan wanted to be a lead guitarist or cricketer; Juhi Chawla, a classical singer; Akshay Kumar dreamt of being a martial art instructor, while Rahul Bose wanted to be a professional rugby player. Both singer Mukesh and director Subhash Ghai nursed ambitions of being leading men! They are not living their lives as they planned them; rather life overtook their plans!

We all know that the last thing Sonia Gandhi ever wanted to do in life is what she is doing today with great élan! None of people's plans for their lives seem to work out. These people did not choose their lives; instead those lives chose them all!

But, is it then such a bad thing for plans not to work out? There is no clear answer to this, though it does feel good to know there's someone out there ready with Plan B! Sure, you may find this scary when you consider cases such as Gitanjali's. On the other hand, Aishwarya and all the rest have not just got a better deal than they planned for, but also seem quite content with lives they never dreamt of giving themselves. Maybe they are even grateful their original plans went awry! I mean, imagine 'Mother Sush Teresa'! Or Ash raising buildings rather than razing hearts!

Does that then mean any planning for the future is doomed to failure? And that one shouldn't plan at all? Not really. The problem is not with the planning; it's with the acceptance. The acceptance of whatever life unfolds for us. Problem is most of the time we are all expending energy trying to fight reality… we just don't accept things as they are — instead, we keep hankering after what could have been or what we had wanted!

Sometimes we get so pigheaded about these things that even when we can clearly see what has unfolded is far better than what was planned, we refuse to be happy. Zen masters nail it right when they say the problem is that most of us tend to go through life doing whatever we do just because circumstance or Destiny have made our life what it is today. They advise you to take your life in control immediately with even the smallest of changes and make the best of what you have.

In short, even if it isn't what you had planned really, make it a life that you have designed, rather than the one that fell to your lot. Do a quick reality check and adapt to Plan B rather than keep bemoaning failure of Plan A. Believe it, more often than not, it works out for the best…

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."