Spontaneity

September 3, 2018

Greetings from who knows what,

I was standing in my kitchen, trying to remember a word you would use to describe doing something without planning, and couldn’t think of it. 

 “Come on,” I said to my wife, who very possibly was not listening, “let’s do something…umm…what’s that word for ..it’s like ‘impetuous’ but…”

In that moment I was trying to convince her to go to Horrock’s market to get spicy pickles.  I was losing momentum because I couldn’t remember that word.  “Dang,” I was saying to myself, it’s not ‘impulsive’, it’s like reckless or…”

I think the word would not appear because I had not used it in so long my brain had put it in the box along with the name of whoever was Vice President under LBJ.

“Spontaneous!”  I said from the other room, where I had wandered to remember.  “Let’s do something spontaneous!”

We were going paddle boarding, which I was trying to also include as a spontaneous activity, but it was her idea and she had planned it weeks before, so it failed to even remotely meet the criteria.

I sort of added on going to get spicy pickles at Horrocks, which is NOT on the way to where we were going, which is one of the hallmarks of spontaneity.  Not on the way.  But on the way to not on the way I realized I forgot my wallet, so we had to spontaneously go back home.  Which counts, I think, since it was also not on the way.

Attempting to give myself credit for spontaneity is a classic sign of trying too hard.  You really can’t fake spontaneity.  Either you is or you isn’t.

My son Carson, while not famous for it, can be spontaneous.   For example, he bought a banjo.  (That’s not the spontaneous part but wouldn’t it be great if it was?)  Anyway, I was taking him and his banjo to the airport (still not the spontaneous part due to TSA regulations) and on the way from the car, he spontaneously created and performed a song about taking his banjo on the plane.  It was so refreshing.  And a little weird.

This spark of refreshing weirdness is what I find sometimes missing in my day.  And when I am reminded it’s missing I tend to try too hard to insert it.  (See above)

You can’t prepare to be spontaneous.  You can’t schedule it into your week, that sort of goes against the defining principles.  But I look at the days ahead and I say; wait a minute I need more of that.  And so I go about trying to fit spontaneity into my plans.  It’s really irony at its finest.

I think about the people I admire and some of them are black belts in spontaneity.  And then there are other people I admire who look at that kind of behavior with disdain.  If we are mature responsible adults we don’t waste our time going to places not on the way.  And so the people I look to for good examples seem to be from two camps, and I have a foot in both.

I am a person of a certain age and attendant responsibilities and appropriate ambitions.  With that comes a calendar filled with appointments, things to be done, lists to complete, places to be.  And there is an imp that tugs at me to go to places not on the way to the places I am expected.

It occurs to me that we are best at acting impulsively when we are extremely young or extremely old, when our inhibitions can’t rule with complete effectiveness, for different reasons.  But the rest of our lives are ruled by the propriety that keep us from whistling in church when everyone else would rather sing. 

Spontaneity is about giving in to an impulse instead of thinking it into extinction.  What follows can be fun or dangerous or silly or a waste of daylight.  The potential is that we scrape off enough of the ordinary to reveal the joy that is in the spontaneous.  It takes courage and on most days I am not that heroic.  But I am aware and I will be better.

The voices in my head say there will be consequences to acting rashly.   The greater risk in life is not making mistakes, though, it is in missing the experience of the not-on-the-way.  We might say ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’, or ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for anything’ or ‘..and that’s how I pulled my hamstring.’ But we should never say ‘I regret not having gone.’

Hope this finds you giving in,

David

Copyright © 2018 David Smith