Spontaneously Challenged

Is it really possible to be truly spontaneous in this day and age; to genuinely act impulsively and do things on the spare of the moment? Certainly there is a social media outpouring of these daring acts of frivolity and flippancy, visual evidence of weekends away, surprise tattoos, unexpected pregnancies. Okay, maybe not the latter, but it does seem that according to our feeds our creative peers are being daring, impulsive, even reckless and, to some extent, it is an enviable pursuit.

There are of course those who do not begrudge these infinitely more interesting lifestyles; those who are more organised, tentative, reluctant; those who seek to achieve through carefully planned and well thought out attainments; those who live, not for the now, but for the sometime in the near future, only after every eventuality has been carefully considered and catered for. These are the organisers; the ponderers; the list-makers.

This is the creative cabinet in which I find myself firmly filed. I am a self-confessed contemplator; a procrastinator if you will and I would venture to state that there is nothing wrong with spending time reflecting on every possible outcome of a scenario, rather than plunging straight in and seeing what happens – what I like to call the Burke Factor. Inevitably it is the thinkers who clean up after the doers most of the time anyway, so why contribute to the inevitably ensuing chaos which perceptively falls in the wake of uninformed irrational behaviour? It makes no sense; it is not a viable option. I say, ‘Admin over action!’

But what if? What if we deliberators were to act more impulsively, to grab the El Encierro bull by the horns and just run with it? Would it improve our quality of life? Would it elevate our social standing? Would it give us something more interesting to talk about at dinner parties, or private views, or write about in short essays? Would we all suddenly become characters in a Luke Rheinhart novel?

Well I guess there’s only one way to find out; we precautions producers need to challenge our outlooks and our mantras; we need to cast aside our caution, our organisation and strive to be more impetuous… Be spontaneous! Tick. Live in the now! Tick. Carpe diem! Tick…