Sunday evening, after supper, in the sitting room, Solange opened a notebook on her knees and wrote a heading: Our next five years. “Land in Bugesera,” she said. “Savings for emergencies. Keza’s school fees from Primary 4. A health check-up for both of us every year.” Her husband, Patrick, looked at the page, then at her. “Do you even know what will happen next month?” “No.”
“Then what is the point? Remember my cousin? He planned his house for ten years. Then his mother fell ill and every franc went to the hospital. Life does what it wants.”
“And remember when we had no plan,” Solange said quietly, “and the hospital bill came anyway? We had nothing to cut from and nothing to lean on.”
Patrick did not answer. The pen lay still on the open page.
Neither of them was wrong. That was the problem.
Patrick’s case: live, and adapt.
Patrick is not lazy. He is realistic. Illness, funerals, a lost job, a failed harvest: most of the events that reshape a family arrive uninvited. A five-year plan can feel like a story we tell ourselves to feel in control.
Plans also have a cost. They can make today feel like a delay. They can turn every detour into a failure, and every disagreement into “but we agreed.” People who wait for the perfect plan sometimes forget to live inside the life they have.
And many Rwandan elders have lived through upheavals that no plan could have survived. For them, “take today as it comes” is not carelessness. It is a hard-won experience.
Solange’s case: plan anyway.
Solange’s point is that uncertainty is exactly why plans exist. Nobody buys insurance because they know they will fall ill. They buy it because they do not know.
Rwanda has built a national scheme on that idea. More than 90% of Rwandans are reported to be covered by the community-based health insurance. Planning for the unknown is already part of how the country works.
A plan also settles a quieter question: what matters most? For a family, it is sharper still, because two people bring different needs and different resources: one supports parents, while the other dreams of a business; one worries about health, the other about school fees. A plan lets them lay it all out, decide what comes first, and pull in the same direction. Without one, money, time, and energy go to whoever or whatever shouts loudest. Not planning is still a plan. It just leaves the decisions to the next emergency.
Dwight Eisenhower, the general turned US president, put it this way in 1957: “Plans are useless, but planning is indespensable.”
Maybe the argument is not plans versus living and adapting.
Research on goals offers something that fits both sides. In a large review of studies, psychologists Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran found that people who prepare specific “if this happens, then I will do that” plans are more likely to reach their goals. Such plans do not assume a smooth road. They can build in what to do when something goes wrong.
That may be the hidden question in that sitting room. Is Patrick against planning, or against plans that pretend nothing will go wrong? Is Solange asking for certainty, or for a way to face uncertainty together?
Questions for couples to debate
- Is a plan a promise or a direction? What happens when we miss it?
- Which things can we predict, such as school fees, aging, and routine health care, and which can we only prepare for?
- Where do we need flexibility, and where do we need a firm commitment?
- If one of us plans and the other adapts, and our needs and resources differ, how do we move in one direction?
- What would a plan look like that expects to be changed?
So, if life is full of uncertainty, is planning worth it?