MAPPING OUT THE FUTURE

Many people, whether they realise it or not, map out their lives. High achievers begin to do it at school as they plan their A’ level studies, choose universities and career paths, linking these in turn with relationships, marriage and children. Others give higher priority to domestic plans; indeed my friend Constance regularly boasts that she achieved her main ambition by marrying at 24. Understandably divorce never figured in her plans. “That was the unexpected bit,” Constance says.

We like to feel that we are in control of our lives and then something calamitous happens to challenge all those presumptions and the natural order of things as we had understood them to be. Not everyone can cope with the unexpected like Constance. “I guess I just like feeling and behaving in a totally dysfunctional manner,” she’s told me. For most people, however, it’s scary when their neatly ordered existence begins to spiral out of control.

Thanks therefore to Soul Mating for listing 50 divorce blogs to find comfort and help in hard times. Constance too is beginning to get her life back into order. Apparently she even made a will last week and reckons that next week she’s going to plan her funeral service and wants to know if I’ll say a few words. “Not if I’m 107 and don’t have any teeth,” I’ve told her.

Seriously though we never know what’s round the corner and that’s also why a group of my colleagues has organised a free session offering advice on how to plan for a secure and happy future; somehow I don’t think many employees from Lehman Brothers will be attending.