You’ve wanted one as long as you can remember. They aren’t cheap, but you crunched the numbers, pinched the pennies. You toted that barge, lifted that bale. Finally, it’s time to head down to the Porsche dealership, no longer just to kick the tires. I assume Porsche dealership, because of course. You’ve happily accepted the fact that your ’08 Sentra trade-in will barely cover the cost of the floor mats. You even cleaned the garage, telling your wife that it was high time that at least one of the cars should be parked in it, dadgummit. No longer will she scoff at the leather driving gloves you bought in the 90’s from the SkyMall catalog while flying to Bismarck, convincing her that they were essential. At least that’s what you muttered to yourself. You already pronounce Porsche using two syllables, because you aren’t a troglodyte. The day arrives; you can hardly wait. You gather your Bitcoin stash into a figurative rucksack and hightail it down to the showroom. But by the time you get there, your virtual bankroll isn’t worth the digital ones multiplied by the digital zeros. You dread the thought of driving that Sentra another minute or another mile. What now???
Wise sage and keen observer of the human condition, Mike Tyson, once astutely surmised, “everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth”. Things often don’t go as planned; maybe they hardly ever do. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t “strategerize” for the future. You’ve heard the cliché. “If you fail to plan, you shouldn’t throw stones on the other side of the fence”, or some such piffle. Remember that time in the fifth grade when you were going to buy a fish from the pet store, in spite of the fact that you didn’t have a fish tank, aerator, food, or that miniature deep sea diver found in every aquarium? Good thing the guy at the register asked a few pertinent questions, although the fish’s life expectancy wasn’t much more in the tank than in the plastic bag you were going to take it home in, based on my own experiences.
There are plenty of unforeseen events in life, and it isn’t easy to have contingency plans for them. But there are things we can do to mitigate any negative consequences.
What will you do when life punches you in the face?
(Click “Stand on Firmer Ground” for a deeper look into What Now?)