#20 "Should I have a plan B?"
Or, what to do when you're waiting for your plot twist
Good morning!
Today, I’m launching a series called Riflections. (I spelled it as “Ri” because that’s what my friends call me. Sorry! I’m corny!) Now I know reflecting is what I do 95% of the time in this newsletter, but I wanted to make this an official format coming from Skinny Deep #9: “Have I turned boring?”—which seemed to resonate well and I personally enjoyed writing.
Basically, in this series, I take someone else’s personal conflict, ponder over it, see how I relate to it, and share what I’ve found. That said, I wouldn’t claim this as an advice column. I offer my own experience and perspective to simply give readers something to chew on and, hopefully, a safe space to consider things in a new, distinctive light.
Today’s Riflection was prompted by Chantal, a doctor in her late twenties who has been with her boyfriend for eight years now—almost all of it, incredibly, in an LDR. She’s applied for work placement in the US where her boyfriend lives, and she’ll have to wait ten months for the results.
But, a clarification: she’s not reorienting her life for her boyfriend. Sure, he’s a factor, but she wants to see this as more of a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone scenario. One bird is to be with her boyfriend; the other is to be able to practice medicine abroad and perhaps fully migrate there. “I mean, that’s what I’m trying to tell myself”, Chantal insisted. “I want to do this for myself.”
And yet, she can’t help but worry: “What if I pack up and move my whole life and we end up breaking up?” She’s visiting her boyfriend soon, which brings up another possibility: “What if, on this trip, we realize that it’s just not going to work out between us?”
Lastly, she wonders: “Should I have a plan B?”
Limbo isn’t exactly the funnest place to be in. Being in that tentative state of life, floating, waiting, holding your breath—probably without even realizing it—as your focus zooms in on a specific, critical point in the future.
Really, I get it. I was just there. Up until exactly a month ago.
Only a handful of people know this, but I applied for an Erasmus program.
If you’re not familiar, Erasmus Mundus is an organization that funds international students in a variety of master’s programs in Europe. Each program is usually hosted by multiple European universities, which means Erasmus scholars get to frolic across Europe for two years—for free. Yes, tuition, board, allowance, and flights are all subsidized. Needless to say, it’s a highly competitive scholarship.
See, my ultimate dream is to live in Europe. Why? For the same reasons Chantal wanted to move to the US: to have a better quality of life. I have this fantasy of writing for hours on end in some lovely, traditional European coffee house, my mind frantically fetching from the bottomless well of inspiration brought by the beauty of four seasons and stunning architecture and interesting characters and scenes I’ve witnessed whilst walking around or riding the sort of seamless public transportation that I will never, ever experience in Metro Manila.
With my passport, there are very limited ways for me to get into Europe. A student visa, notwithstanding the difficulty of getting into a program and school you actually like, seems to be the most straightforward route. (Note: We’re running on a biological clock here.)
I applied for the master’s program knowing I gave it the best shot possible. I painstakingly wrote my personal statement, which was a bulk of the criteria, and had a strong resume and stellar references to back it up. I packaged everything into a compelling and cohesive narrative—a skill that I’m quite confident of given it’s what I have to do all the time (in my day job and as an independent writer). Let me also note that I’ve cultivated a rather strong sense of self-efficacy. So even with a 2% acceptance rate in my program, I really did believe in my chances.
Before moving on, I’d like to confess yet another thing that I share with Chantal. There was a guy I liked who lived in Europe. We had a fallout last year. And it broke me. I took that energy as fuel for my dream. And like Chantal, I told myself that he—and the fantasies I once had of being with him—was not part of the equation. I was going to Europe for me.
When I applied in January, I was so hell-bent and 100% positive I was going to take the scholarship if it was awarded to me. And if the odds were in my favor, I’d be in Glasgow by September. I’d finish the program in two years, then find work there.
But in the months that ensued, the strangest thing happened.
Or more accurately, it was a bunch of emotionally-charged moments that hit me out of nowhere, it almost felt pathetic.
The first one happened at Ne-Yo’s concert in January. I went with my sister—a doctor in her fellowship, which I believe is the 458th phase of medical life. That’s my way of saying that this was the first time in a long time we were going to catch a concert or do some big, fun thing together.
I arrived at the concert first. Ne-Yo opened with my favorite song of his, Miss Independent. My sister was nowhere to be found. I kept calling her—sometimes leaving my seat to escape the noise—and asking where she was. (She was where you’d mostly find Filipinos daily: in traffic). She said I should stop calling; it was stressing her out. Obviously, it did not help get her to the concert faster.
As Ne-Yo sang through his biggest bops, putting the whole arena in a total vibe, I fought back the tears that were welling up in my eyes.
But I wasn’t sad because I was alone. I just kept thinking, “I should be enjoying this with my sister.” And I was overcome by the thought that it made it impossible for me to fully enjoy being there. (My sister arrived about halfway through the set.)
Then, I’d think about Shelby, my Golden Retriever puppy. I’d imagine finding out that I received the scholarship, and it would hit me that I’d have to leave him. Before his first birthday. And I would tear up. This happened more than once.
Then when I got back the first week of April from my US trip—a trip, mind you, that I’d gone on with two of my best friends—I woke up at 4 AM sorely missing all my closest friends, so much so that I hit up my friend Nicah and said I’d visit her and her husband Robin within the week. This profound yearning to see my friends persisted for the next couple of days.
Being back from my trip, I knew that meant the scholarship results would arrive in my inbox anytime soon. And I would finally know how the rest of my year would pan out. Was it going to be Plan A (Get the scholarship and go to Europe)? or Plan B (Start my new job in April and stay until further notice)?
But as the quarter progressed, I found myself considering something else. A rather insane possibility: What if I get the scholarship—practically a free ride to Europe—but I don’t go for it?
On the day I was to visit Nicah, I planned on airing out my anxieties because if I didn’t I felt like I might explode. From being up in the air, on edge about the results, pending as my state of being, dealing with all those weird episodes of overwhelming feelings, and keeping all these thoughts to myself for so long.
But I didn’t have to tell her much anymore.
I got the results earlier that day.
And the odds were not in my favor.1
Or… were they?
In a recent meeting, our team was discussing what we needed to present to the client in the revised deck. Much as we’d love to be able to iron out the nitty-gritty of the plan, there were certain aspects of it where it was just too early to decide on. So we settled on the scope. And for the parts that we chose to defer, a colleague said: “Let’s cross that bridge another day.”
At one point over the quarter, it did occur to me that that’s all I could do: cross the bridge when I get there. In limbo, there was no point in dwelling over what might come next. Because annoyingly, you’ll only really know what happens after the plot twist… once the plot has been twisted.
But as it turns out, my plot twist wasn’t the scholarship result—but how I felt about it.
When the Erasmus door closed on me, I expected to feel devastated. And ashamed. And that I’d mourn the lost opportunity. But I didn’t. Sure, it stung for a hot minute, but when I mentioned it to Nicah and Robin, it came out as an “Oh well!” kind of news. I might even say that I felt something that resembled… relief.
The possibility of getting the scholarship, quitting my job, leaving my dog and my family and my friends, missing all their weddings and milestones—a possibility that once thrilled me somehow now unsettled me. My fortune was that I was spared from making the hard decision to leave, or the crazy decision to pass up the opportunity and not leave.
With all those outbursts of overwhelming feelings about my loved ones, I can’t help but wonder if that was my body signaling that something was shifting inside me. Plus—to tie that loose end about the European guy—the fog of heartbreak had finally lifted, which made it easier for me to listen to my gut. I still can’t say for sure which one it is, but it’s either I began to want the opportunity less, or maybe I didn’t actually want it as much as I thought.
I share my journey because of what I sensed from Chantal: her dilemma wasn’t premised on a fixation on Plan A, but on the hard but brave recognition that there can be a Plan B, C, D, and so on. And perhaps she sees, however faintly, how these other possibilities aren’t necessarily consolations. She could have a good life abroad, but she also has a pretty solid one here, too.
I don’t mean to project my life onto Chantal’s. We’re very different people with a wholly different set of variables to contend with. But what I’ve learned through all this is that, sometimes, life has a funny way of showing you what you really want, where you should be, what you can take, and most fundamentally, what’s important to you. In my case, it amplified what I always knew mattered most and already had.
On my last day in New York, I was able to write a short journal entry-ish of a note, which I hid in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library2. “These past months and throughout the trip,” I admitted, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how warm (literally and figuratively) my life is in the Philippines.”
There aren’t majestic classical coffee houses here. Manila is nowhere near perfect, but I realize that “my life here has been nothing short of the rainbow AND the pot of gold at the end of it.”
When you don’t know what to do, what’s next, or find yourself at the mercy of that damn proverbial bridge that feels so far, far away, here’s what I’ve found redeeming: you can let life, and your truth, unfold before you.
You can keep your heart open. You can listen to yourself. And you can trust, as Haley Nahman said, that “clarity builds.”
Not that Chantal isn’t already such an open-minded and open-hearted person. This is what struck me most about our conversation. To be like her, aware and accepting that life could go either way, is such a wise and grounded position to be in.
This reminds me of a beautiful excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love. Destiny, she suggests, is a relationship:
A play between divine grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over; half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions will show measurable consequence. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he’s a little of both. We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses – one foot is on the horse called ‘fate,’ the other on the horse called ‘free will’. And the question you have to ask every day is – which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it’s not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?
On fate, there’s one more thing I’d tell Chantal: Few kinds of fate are irreversible. Moving abroad isn’t one of them.
That’s what I reminded myself of when I imagined leaving and felt an ache in my chest. My master’s program is just that. A two-year commitment, not a life sentence. In the same vein, whatever happens to Chantal, to her relationship, her career, or whatever—she can always choose to come home.
Now, regarding Plan B, I think it’s always worth thinking about. (As mentioned earlier, mine was to find a new job that I’ll hopefully like. I’m happy to report that I like it very much.)
I’ve heard that take before about dissing backups. “There’s no reason to have a plan B,” Will Smith asserted, “because it distracts from plan A.”
I disagree.
I believe we’re perfectly capable of holding at least one other route in mind. This doesn’t negate or steal from your desire and determination to pursue the original plan. If anything, it shows that you recognize there are uncontrollable factors at play (see: Gilbert's quote above) / that you remember that if Plan A doesn’t work out, yeah, it’ll suck, but life will go on / that you know where you can exercise your free will. There’s much power and resilience to be found in mulling over Plan B.
At the end of my catch-up with my friends, Robin told me, “I’m glad to hear you’re doing well, Ri!” I didn’t know how to react. Was I?
After 2,500 words, after realizing that limbo is where you can find room for where you’re headed, that new, luminous bridges can reveal themselves, that perhaps up in the air is where beautiful, unseen territories come to view—yes, I think it’s safe to say: I am doing well.
If you liked this, help your girl out & like this post! Or recommend it to someone who might relate. You can also comment on the post or reply to this email. In any case, it’ll really motivate me! (which I definitely need, lol) ♡
I got into the program, but I wasn’t granted the scholarship.
I hid it on the third-floor mezzanine, farthest shelf, History of Europe section.