Running out of circles

Let's say I get 80 years on the planet, a couple more than the average indicated on actuarial tables for someone like me living in the United States. I've seen a few lifespan visual images, but this one snagged me.

That's 80 years in circles (profound and funny simultaneously, that circle idea), the white circles those I have left (if I get 80). This is an image that disturbs me. I like living. I already want more than that. Maybe once I get there I won't.

I have been typing up my handwritten journals lately in order to lighten my material load and confronted a bummer hidden in plain sight in the pages: wherever I've been, I'm frequently not there so much as busy making plans for the next thing or something down the road or some future me that I want to be. This trait didn't emerge until I graduated from high school but then it kicked into high gear and has been running the show ever since. I struggle being where I am; I feel like I'm wasting time; I have itchy feet and a wanderlustful spirit. I'm internally conflicted about what I really want: inside me dwell two spiritual fathers, two Johns, if you will: John Burroughs who became intimate with nature closest to home, the agriculturalist, teacher and writer who didn't much care for travel, and John Muir, the explorer and adventurer, traveling lightly and full of wonder through the world. I am constantly flipping between these two desires. I settle somewhere and almost immediately regret it; I wander and start yearning for a place to be. Meanwhile, the years slip along.

In contemplating the implications of this inner trait/bedevilment and the circle lifespan image, another John steps on the stage, John Lennon, and delivers a line from his song Beautiful Boy:"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." The line is open to many interpretations but at the moment, I see two: one is that we can plan all we want but life does not behave according to our plans. The other idea is what the line suggests when I look at the circles: yep, life was happening all along. It's happening right now. My plans are kind of my Quixotesque folly. I'm going to have these plans, most of which will NOT come to fruition for one reason or other or won't work out in quite the way I thought. I'll probably still keep making plans. I've got things I want to do, try, learn and create, but I'd be much better off if I simply did, tried, learned, and created, instead of planning to do these things sometime later. The reality is if I keep putting these off for later, I'm going to run out of circles. I will miss living life.

Now I have three Johns vying for my circles ...

PS: I hope the fact that my circle graphic is wonky is both something you noticed and practice for letting go of stupid stuff that doesn't matter.