His words remind me of my piece, https://medium.com/illumination-curated/life-is-school-for-the-soul-9b081dbe8453 , which includes this:

"I love the irony of this oft-quoted and misunderstood saying:

'Man Plans, and God Laughs.'

This statement is used to diminish the role that free-will has upon our lives — that we cannot defeat the universe’s scripts. The irony is that while our higher powers have to approve our scripts/outlines, we wrote them. I wonder what goes on in the Executive Producer’s lounge as Zoroaster and Vishnu and Shiva and Rama and Kali and Kama and the rest of the heads of our tribes negotiate the interplay of their charges’ life spans."