Moments of Spontaneity

[bene_legionary]

As always life seems to be a bit topsy turvy, and sometimes it feels like the best thing is to just drop the expectations and do something on the spot, forgetting the judgment of people around you (and most importantly, your own) and to do what you want to do in the moment. And some of those moments can be incredibly rewarding. So, what have you done that has been spontaneous? What more could you do? Do you think you should live life more spontaneously?

I'll start with my own example. I was in Sri Lanka the past few weeks and to get there I had an eight hour layover in Melbourne. The city I've been trying to go to study in for years at this point. Well the last time I had been there was about ten years ago and when I was going up the escalator to the international terminal I had the thought of popping out to check on some of my friends who had moved there after high school. That ended up with me buying a Myki card and finding my way to RMIT, where one of my close friends went to study interior design, and also the University of Melbourne where I met someone I knew from an online community who began studying there this year. We had a good time talking about the differences between Melbourne and New Zealand and our involvement in that community; as for my friend at RMIT he wasn't on campus that day so I gave him a call (we hadn't talked in half a year) and ended up having a chat for an hour about how life has progressed for the both of us, which I really appreciated because I also don't call people in general very much and it was rewarding to have a spontaneous call like that! I also took the opportunity to experience the metro system (NZ could do with better public transport, I was pretty impressed) and see a little bit of the central city, a lot more alive than what we have in NZ. None of this would have happened if I decided to ask my parents first, who were expecting me in Sri Lanka, and would have to wait another day to see me because I ended up finding out upon arriving back to the airport that, being one of the last people to check-in after my little tour pushed the limits of my schedule, they had overbooked the flight to Colombo. They ended up putting me on the next flight to Doha to get to Colombo from there – thankfully without any extra expense on our end since SriLankan Airlines overbooked the flight. I don't think I'll try escaping to the city again on that tight of a schedule, but it was more than I had thought was going to happen when I started the trip, and I also got to visit Qatar (well just the airport) for the first time too, haha.

 

[warpus]

I was trying to think of a good spontaneous thing I've done over the years and only the bad ones popped in my head at first. Like the time I went out of my way to buy bags of milk to throw at my friend across the street. It wasn't planned. I did not know I would be buying that milk until I had it in my hand. Then I crossed the street and lunged the bags of milk in the air, using my physics and olympics knowledge to have them land right in front of my friend. For years this event was an oft quoted part of our friendship. I do not recommend throwing objects as part of being spontaneous, but in that particular case it worked out great overall. Still, I was told to never do that again.

Last year I flew to Lisbon, Portugal, and met up with a friend who had been there for about a week and was able to scope some things out before I got there. He told me we arrived in the middle of a set of street parties, with DJs, food, beer booths, and a bit of a festival-like atmosphere throughout the city. 10-15 min walk from our airbnb there was this plaza with a view that had a whole bunch of food, beer, and other booths set up, with a stage with a DJ or band, people dancing, communal style seating set up, etc. So that's where we went the first couple evenings I was there, at least at first.

One of these evenings the DJ was playing pretty good music that I could actually dance to, we mingled with people, made some new friends, ate some good food, tried a whole bunch of local brews, and then at 3 AM the next thing we know, right as the clock turns to 3:00:00 AM, all the lights go out and the music stops.

We were bummed that the party was over, we were having a blast. We met a whole bunch of girls none of us whom wanted to have any extended physical contact with us at the time, but the company was top notch, the music was great, the vibes were positive, and the food was tasty.

We saw people pouring out of bars in the area too, but decided to walk through some of the nearby alleys after we saw a couple people head in that direction right when the lights went out. Why did they all go there? We sensed that these peopel knew something. So instead of heading back to the airbnb, we went down that alley and started looking around.

We came across a smaller street on which there seemed to be several open bars, and one particular bar seemed very inviting. There were two gentlemen standing at the entrance, enthusiastically encouraging passers-by to come inside. One of them was holding an open bottle of some sort of hard liquor in his hand, the performed hand gestures implying that those who enter will receive a shot of some of this liquor straight from the bottle. And indeed, we witnessed people entering the establishment, and as they passed roughly distributed contents of the bottle were poured down their throats.

The party continues! This is exactly what we were looking for. We go in there and it's packed to the rim with mainly a 20-30 type crowd, both genders represented in reasonable numbers, the DJ playing a thumping house or techno beat mixed in with some hip hop, we get right in the middle of that dancefloor and start dancing. The party continues indeed. We walk up to the bar and get some drinks, and eventually my friend is like.. hey.. look. He points at the sign on the wall and the sign indicates that we are standing at the cocktail bar, but the thing is that the word cocktail was not one word but two, and this was in fact a gay bar and when you looked closer you saw the penises on the wall.

And that's fine. I mean, we were having a blast, the music was great, and there were some really cute ladies dancing it up on the dancefloor. We assumed this was not what your typical gay bar in Portugal is like, but for all intents and purposes it made sense to stay there for a while.