Advice to those trying to plan ahead

Melina, my daughter, will graduate from college in May and she's looking for a job. She's peering into that fog that hides the future from us, looking for the path, and even though she has great eyes, she can't see any farther than the rest of us can.

A career planner asks an audience: "How many of you had a Plan A when you went out into the world?" Most raise their hands. "How many of you are actually living Plan A?" Virtually all the hands go down.

How accidental it all seems. Did you plan, or could you have predicted, the place you've ended up at this point in your life?

And this reminds me of a rabbi's parable ...

Once, a man dreamed of being the greatest archer who ever lived. He studied at the military academy in Moscow, learning to plant his feet and square his shoulders, to address the string with three fingers, to suspend his breath at the moment of release.

He became one with the target. Eventually he shot perfect bull's-eyes almost every time. He was traveling home from Moscow when he came upon a riveting sight: an enormous barn and on that barn a hundred targets. Some small, some big, some in the middle of the wall, some low, but in the center of every single target, an archer had shot a perfect bull's-eye.

Our archer marvelled: "I couldn't do that!" He asked a passing village to find the archer who had done it.

The villager came back shortly with a kid. "You did this?" the archer asked. "Uh-huh," replied the girl. "Can you teach me how?" "Uh-huh." And she showed him just how she liked to stand and hold the bow, and just how she pulled the string, and just how she held her breath at the moment of release.

And then she explained... "Just after your arrow hits the barn, take a bucket of paint, and paint a target all around it."

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