Spontaneity

Spontaneity matters to me. Spontaneity is real. It mines desires and motivations and wishes from the substance of day-to-day life and turns that raw ore into experience. Friends who can adapt to spontaneity and who become part of it are the sorts of people I love and embrace and appreciate deeply. Yesterday morning (actually, this morning, as I’m writing this on Friday evening, to be posted Saturday morning), my wife agreed to my sudden surprise request that we take an utterly unplanned day trip. And, then, we invited friends who live two and a half hours away to meet us “halfway” for lunch as part of the surprise. They agreed. Even though they had the longer drive, they agreed. We met at a Mexican restaurant in Dardanelle and spent a couple of hours eating and talking and enjoying the company of friends. And then we went on our respective ways home.

We (our friends and all of us humans) ought to do that sort of thing more often. We should treat ourselves to surprises. We should be spontaneous. We should ignore the fact that spontaneity distracts us from schedules and does damage to our neat calendars and drags us away from boredom or routine or rote behavior. Instead, I say we should celebrate opportunities to break free of methodical treks around the clock. I say “should,” because I like spontaneity. But I shouldn’t be prescriptive about it, in fact. Do it if it feels good. Don’t if it doesn’t. Some people don’t like spontaneity. They find deviation from routine upsetting. But I find it uplifting. I find spur of the moment road trips exciting. I enjoy breaking out of routine and doing something unusual. Perhaps my reason for jumping on the idea today was the slim but real possibility that I either won’t recover from my upcoming surgery or I’ll come out of it with disabilities that I never realistically contemplated going in. Given that unlikely possibility, maybe I ought to break out of routine while I can.

I can think of many other things I might want to do, “just in case.” But many of them would be problematic, especially if the operation and recovery go according to plan. Obviously, I can’t go into those here. I can only say that one of the possibilities could land me in prison or worse. So, there’s a limit to the attraction of spontaneity. Unless the prognosis is dire and imminent. That sort of diagnosis could lead to an outbreak of human decency in high places. 😉

Back to spontaneity. Unexpected diversions tend to launch smiles and hugs and kisses. They tend to polish the edges of otherwise mundane moments and make them sparkle with reflective gems of happiness. Spontaneity produces giddiness.

I’m writing this, as I said, on Friday evening. I will schedule it to post sometime Saturday. Oh, the irony of scheduling a post on spontaneity!

I may write something on Saturday morning that will post before or after this. We’ll see how this compares to something written after a night’s sleep or sleeplessness. Maybe I’ll be spontaneous.