Spontaneity 101

Recently I’ve been talking with a good friend about spontaneity. I’ve never considered myself a spontaneous person, but have on occasion done something “out of the blue”. In the past it’s involved going somewhere on a whim, but lately I haven’t been very spontaneous. Well, I decided to do something about it a few weeks ago. Yes, I made plans to be spontaneous.

While making plans to be spontaneous may sound a little odd, it was a lot of fun! I gave myself the freedom to act without thinking at least once during the week. At first this was a bit difficult, because I like to think through everything I do. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it took awhile for me to get used to looking for opportunities to be spontaneous — and it’s not so much looking for opportunities (you’re not supposed to try to be spontaneous) as it is being open to the urge to pursue them.

So a couple weeks ago as I was walking back from the gym I noticed a group of students standing outside of a cooperative house a few blocks from my apartment. The students were holding up signs and recruiting people to something, and my first reaction was to cross to the other side of the street (so as not to be recruited ;). When I realized that they were collecting shoes for Haiti, my first thought was to go back home and give them a pair, because I have a lot of shoes…way too many shoes for a guy — seriously, I’m pushing like 14 or 15 pairs. And while that includes one pair for every major sport, I have more than a few pairs to spare.

My second thought was that the apartment was a long way off and I might as well give them the shoes I was wearing. Here’s where it gets interesting. The part of me that likes to think things through told me that I should go back to the apartment first and decide if I really wanted to give away my shoes. After some evaluation, I mused, I could decide that I need all 15 pairs that I have — besides, based on the number of shoes scattered in the yard, it looked like the students had quite a haul anyway. What’s one more pair of shoes?

It was at this point that I stopped myself and realized that this was a perfect opportunity to be spontaneous. So I began walking toward the tent and students, prepared to do just what I had first thought of doing. And I walked home barefoot.