Twenty-Something Tuesdays 1.3

"If I was twenty-five again,
I would think less and feel more. Plan less and do more. Fear less and go forth with no plan, no expectation, no rumination. Just feel."

-An Amazing Woman

This amazes me because it is so contrary to what so many of us have been told. As soon as we've learned to think for ourselves, we are expected to do it all the time. And in that thinking, we are supposed to prepare ourselves for the road ahead and err on the side of caution. Rationalize. Organize. Prioritize. If the answer for doing something was simply, "because I feel like it" it was assumed that person was being irresponsible or fresh (or both).

But so much good can come from abandoning those precepts - art for one. I've heard on more than one occasion that it is through suffering that the purest artist comes forth. Now, I'm not about to cosign that one go through her life miserable to make great art (though to each her own). Yet, imagine if we did not even indulge that anguish or any feeling at all? If we did not permit ourselves to feel whimsy, there might be no fiction. Without pain -- no great tragedies, and perhaps considerably fewer comedies. Without sarcasm -- no theater of the absurd (and no Woody Allen, for that matter). And that's only a slice of the literary and dramatic arts. How many great works would be lost to us, if artists were afraid of how their work would be perceived or judged? Furthermore, inspiration is nothing if not spontaneous creativity. That Muse everybody talks about? She's real, and in my experience she never comes when I sit around thinking about her.

Now, there is a time and place for everything. Thought, planning and fear exist, so they must be here for a reason. I'm not suggesting we throw caution to the wind with no regard for the repercussions of our actions (even if we can use the excuse of being young and foolish), but we cannot be immobilized by our right brains. We can learn a lot from Hamlet, who thought himself into inaction, though intensely passionate he was. Leave a little room for thinking, planning and fear but only an under-the-seat or overhead compartment's worth. If it's more than will fit in there, then check them at the door and quickly, lest life takes off without us.