Spontaneity

After publishing "Living Like It Was My Last Day--Part II" (3/15/14) late Saturday night, I emailed my college roommate that if that were my last day, I'd want to talk with her.  Late Sunday afternoon I received a text "...how about now?" In a split second, I had pushed her number into my phone, and we were talking. We laughed...a lot.  We recalled sitting on her sofa during a visit three or four years ago, lingering over tea and laughing.

The wonder of it all was the ease and spontaneity with which both those events happened.  We didn't plan the call for weeks: it just happened in seconds.  As I recall the visit was similar.  I had a wild hair a few days before Labor Day and called her about getting together. After a couple false starts, I was headed to Cincinnati for the weekend...and it was a rich one.  Nothing fancy. Sitting on the deck, sitting in a café, walking along the river, sitting on the couch. Perfect!  It just doesn't get better than that.

This evening I was the beneficiary of a similarly rich spontaneous evening.  Netflix notified me that a film a friend and I had talked about seeing was going to arrive today.  I forwarded the email.  In seconds came a reply, "I'm in."  I grabbed a couple things for a simple dinner in front of the movie.  We laughed as I prepared food. We enjoyed the movie together.  No planning.  It just happened...easily.

The movie friend above and I traveled to Tuscany a few years ago--completely without itinerary except for our flight arrival and departure.  We did what we felt like doing when we felt like doing it.  When a hand-scrawled sign advertised "guest rooms," she did a U-turn on the narrow windy road, and we had a magnificent evening in a small guest house with a spectacular view, drinking 10-year old wine that was on sale because it was so old.  We had 16 days like that.

With each passing year, I've come to relish spontaneity more. I don't know if it is my over-scheduled work life that leaves me running from one 30-minute meeting to another 30-minute meeting from 7:30 to 5:30 or if it is just being more comfortable in my own skin and knowing the there is something refreshing about listening to my inner guidance system and "just doing it," but it just fits. I almost bristle at having to plan things in advance that get so complicated that I've lost the excitement before we make schedules work. I am pretty sure that whatever is written on the back of my heart must include something about spontaneity.