If you want to make God laugh then plan your life. Set out to achieve this and that goal, job pathway, future and inevitably something or someone comes along and it all changes, writes Ruta Mave.

It is such a confusing world we live in. Choose your life books and all say to imagine dream and visualise how your life will be and then feel it, believe it and act like you already have it and sure enough it will be yours. Ask, believe and you shall receive. The world is your oyster, all you have to do is go out and get it. Follow your heart see your pearl shining, waiting to be plucked up and treasured, it is there - your world your oyster just a little closer and it is yours. As you are about to wrap your fingers around it and claim it something shifts and instead of the pearl in your hand you are left holding the shucked shell.

Life is a funny thing to negotiate and it is one you are not given an instruction manual for. Parents are your initial guides but it’s not like they have it all worked out, in fact the very birth of you has taken them on a spin they were not prepared for as they think they were.

Life is about making mistakes and learning from them. Some are not mistakes

necessarily, but they may not be acceptable in polite society. Others are mistakes but they lead to discovering new ways or paths to a better future. It all seems such a random collection of trial and error you have to wonder if it is or is there a guiding force deliberately tripping you up or pushing you down to test your reserve?

It is all very nice to read about our guiding angels who lead us to our destiny to

follow God’s plan for us. Karma, they say will come to us all. If you do a bad thing to one person it will come back to you from someone else. Similarly, if you do a good deed then good deeds will flow to you. Either way it doesn’t seem like karma comes soon enough for the bad offenders and never seems to come for the good guys.

What many people seem to believe is that there will be a redemption when they die and despite them being a little cretin here on earth once they die, they will instantly become an angel and accepted at the pearly gates. Actually no, live a cretin you die a cretin and you have a cretin afterlife end of story.

So why is it when you set your goals and you achieve good deeds and you have a life plan that is about helping people and sharing societal measure of acceptable good deeds does God throw a spanner in the works and sends you off on another tangent?

You came to the woods and saw two roads diverge, one was well trodden and obviously popular and the other less worn. So, you head down the smooth path only to be knocked off and bowled over onto the path less travelled. Shaking your head, you wonder where did I get that wrong? Other times you see the path less chosen, it is the path of truth. Not too many like to go down that road as it can be dark and dangerous and fraught with the ghosts of other people’s fear, who will attack you and throw all manner of things at you.

There are challenges, uphill climbs and whispers of temptation to sway you from your goal of finding truth. But if truth is your guiding light, if truth is the mantel you uphold more than the jewels of life others are distracted by like money, power, arrogance and greed, just keep following your guiding light.

Of all the commodities in this world truth is the most elusive one. It is the one talked about these days in veiled terms of transparency and accountability, these are waved in your face but waived in the board room where the decisions are made and the money is divided up into ‘one for you the rest for me’ agenda. Truth tests those who live behind lies and who spread fear amongst people so they can control them for their own needs. Truth is the elephant in the room that lingers in the long pauses between questions and answers. Truth is patient, willing to wait with little to no attention or visible support. Those who seek truth do so with love, you can’t have one without the other. When the truth seeker questions their path, they need trust. Trust is the daughter of truth and the mother of love. Trust God has a plan for you.