Fractals are an example of exquisite design without planning. The repeated emission of something that seems random results in something that has clear organization on a larger scale.

There are writers who work with detailed outlines mapping the course of their stories. There are those who start with a single sentence, and venture forward with no plan at all.

There are sculptors and architects and scientists and knitters who have a vision they hope to achieve, with every step and necessary supply anticipated. There are those who make the first stitch blindly.

I knew a man who never learned more than a single word, who seemed to see people in the same light as he saw a chair or a tree. Give him a pencil, and he could produce detailed, accurate drawings. He came back from a doctor's appointment once clutching a drawing he had done in the waiting room. The drawing was of a window pane in the door to the examining rooms. He had carefully reproduced the diamond pattern imbedded in the safety glass.

What he chose to draw helped me to see differently. Out of the busy activity around him, something in him was drawn to attend to and reflect through his pencil and paper that single window.

We benefit from the planners among us, and from those who seem to exist entirely in the moment.