Spontaneity: A chance to learn something

In the last two weekends, I have driven 2,556 miles, spent 44 hours in the car, slept for a total of 20 hours, traveled through eight states and finished no homework.

What a good looking crew!
PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C.

I spent the other hours covering the St. Bonaventure University men's and women's basketball teams throughout their phenomenal and historical NCAA journeys.

If you know me at all, you know I would never say yes to an unexpected trip to Nashville, Tenn. three days beforehand. And I would never say yes to a trip to Raleigh, N.C. that next weekend.

Usually, these trips would have been planned months in advance. Not days, or even weeks, before.

My friends always tell me I am not spontaneous, and I agree with them.

If do something off the cuff, I get scared I will make a fool of myself or not look composed and perfect. I never think about how I could possibly have a good time, learn something about myself or create memories.

I fail to remember that good can come out of spontaneity.

But being spontaneous does not always mean hopping in the car and driving to another state.

Being spontaneous might mean taking pictures of smiley faces like Ruth Kaiser does.

Photo courtesy of
blog.spontaneoussmiley.com

Kaiser began the Spontaneous Smiley Project which challenges everyone to look for smiley faces in unexpected places, take a picture of them and post the pictures to the project’s Smile Gallery.

For each uploaded picture, the project donates a dollar to Operation Smile, an international medical charity that provides safe, reconstructive surgery for children born with facial deformities. Since the partnership began, 17 surgeries have been fully funded by Spontaneous Smiley.

Kaiser’s choice to begin a project like this promotes not only the idea of slowing down but always looking for the positivity in the simple things.

Being spontaneous could also mean making a YouTube video to educate the world on the problems in Uganda.

At the beginning of March, the Invisible Children organization aired a half hour-long documentary on Joseph Kony, a warlord in Uganda.

Photo courtesy of
whatculture.com

The video explains how Kony, as the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has abducted children and forced them into various forms of slavery.

The video has been on YouTube since March 5 and has had more than 86 million views to this day.

Invisible Children hopes to not only educate on the injustice but to also end the injustice by getting the Ugandan government to arrest Kony and disband the LRA.

Although Kony has not been arrested yet, the video has brought awareness and sparked inspiration.

Kaiser and Invisible Children have both shown me how spontaneity can produce goodness and change.

I can’t sit here and write that every spontaneous decision will bring about goodness or positive change, though. But I can say that spontaneity does help make realizations.

With Kaiser, I realized slowing down to look for smiley faces in odd places might make me happier and might help me see the positive side of life.

With Invisible Children, I realized that I have a voice and using it to speak for others can actually make a difference.

                I might not have done any homework or gotten a sufficient amount of sleep in the past two weekends.

It's not a trip without an Elvis impersonator!
Nashville, Tenn.

But I also laughed more than I have all semester, felt calm and at peace with everything going on, made memories that make me smile and created lasting friendships with some amazing people.

I hope all my spontaneous choices create goodness, change and positivity. But that might not always happen. I do know, though, that whatever spontaneous choice I make will help me see something. And learning about myself and the world only makes me more excited to make some spontaneous decisions.