“Man plans, and God laughs.” — Yiddish adage

What do you want most in life? I’m not talking about specific items like a Ferrari, diamonds or an AK-47.

Nor am I talking about bucket lists, no matter how cleverly the travel agencies market their far-off destinations that tease the promise of philosophical insights from the balconies of high-rise hotels.

I’m not knocking travel, by the way, being a hopeless wanderer by nature. I just laugh when I see it merchandised in such a crass way.

No, I’m talking about what philosophers might call “states of being.” We seek comfort. Control. Giving and receiving enduring love.

And if I asked you which of those three is most important, you’d probably say “love.” But I suspect that we actually seek most the ability to control our lives. We’ve been taught since our youth that if we plan carefully, work hard, govern our impulses and do the right things, we’ll be able to predict our future with a reasonable level of confidence.

This is what we want. And sometimes it works. For a while. Maybe. Until it doesn’t.

Because there is an inescapable truth we think we can avoid, until we discover we can’t. It’s the idea that no matter how carefully we plan our life, and no matter how much detail we put into the planning, in the end God, or random chance, or your neighbor down the street, or a war in Europe, or a virus you picked up by touching a random table top can suddenly turn your plans upside down and possibly into dust.

It is a sobering and uncomfortable thought to realize just how fragile all our carefully laid plans really are. We think we have everything worked out, and then the roof needs replacing, or a new virus appears, or cancer strikes, or a war on the other side of the globe that has nothing whatsoever to do with us blows up our lives one inexorable day at a time.

For the last year, the slow drip from the faucet of inflation has been turning into a small but steady stream. And now, in just the last week, the faucet handle has broken off, and water is spilling everywhere.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one experiencing a feeling similar to the start of stomach flu when I gassed up my car this week. The shock of watching gas prices jump by more than a dollar in just a few days — and knowing there’s more to come — is the stuff nausea is made of.

Add to that the knowledge of how rising fuel costs will affect costs in every other sector of the economy, and we’re all left feeling the queasiness that comes from watching our carefully planned lives begin to spin out of control.

Our first instinct in such situations is to look for someone to blame. Biden’s a good target, just as Trump was a good target when COVID started its unchecked spread in 2020. Blame makes us feel better by giving us somewhere to aim our anger, but the benefits of anger are notoriously short-lived — they last only as long as it takes to realize our anger accomplishes nothing.

So if you have a pit in your stomach this week due to COVID, Ukraine and the sudden grass fire of raging inflation, you’re not alone. Periodically life reminds us of how little control we have in our lives and how quickly things can go haywire.

And it’s even possible that the Hard Times 2.0 we’re now entering may be scarier than the COVID complications that have kept us tap-dancing for the last two years.

If there is an upside in all this disruption, it’s that times like these force us to remember how much we need each other.

Which might be a good lesson for us to remember, since we’ve all forgotten how to make togetherness actually work. Perhaps this will be the push we need to remind us of the benefits of reintroducing ourselves to our real, non-virtual neighbors on the other side of our real, non-virtual backyard fence.

Chris Huston is an author and award-winning columnist living in southern Idaho. Connect with Chris on both Facebook and Instagram at Chris Huston-Finding My Way and at chrishustonauthor.com.