Impulsivity or Spontaneity

Over the past few months I have not written very much at all. My thought is that if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything.

It took me a long time to feel comfortable sitting in silence. Recently, on a trip to Europe, I found myself with someone who rarely initiated a conversation.

And so there were many times when silence simply sat patiently between us.

This morning my eldest daughter sent me a beautiful piece spoken by the late—and, in my humble opinion, great—philosopher Alan Watts. His words were embedded in a piece of music called The Unspeakable World by Adi Goldstein.

I was two weeks short of my twentieth birthday when Watts died. He was just twenty-one when he wrote his first book, The Spirit of Zen.

I remember reading his words a lifetime ago, but today they resonated so powerfully.

Watts spoke about what happens when we talk all the time. We never hear what anybody else has to say, and eventually all we have to talk about is our own conversation. He believed the same was true of thinking. If the constant chatter inside our heads never stops, eventually all we have to think about is our own thinking.

Just as we have to stop talking in order to hear another person, we have to stop thinking for long enough to experience what life actually is.

Watts called this, borrowing the wonderful phrase from Alfred Korzybski, “the unspeakable world.”

It is the world before we name it.

The ordinary sights and sounds and smells. The texture of shadows on the floor. A leaf before we call it a leaf. Colour before we decide it is green or red or brown.

Watts’s point was that the world is infinitely richer than the labels we place upon it. When we stop constantly naming and defining what is in front of us, perhaps we begin to really see it.

So today, on my morning walk, I practised simply Being.

Seeing, listening, but not naming.

And as I walked, I pondered something else.

How was it that, once again, on returning from a trip, I had succeeded in creating an illness that required me to stay in bed and give my upper respiratory tract and lungs a chance to catch their breath?

I fully own this.

Kabbalah teaches us that everything that comes into our lives, whether it is our preference or not, is an opportunity to accept, acknowledge and appreciate. The moment we decide that something is simply “bad” or “good,” we can block the opportunity for self-awareness.

We are not merely victims of external circumstances, although many people may feel this to be true.

It is simply not my truth.

At a time when I was reassessing my life, my friendships and my goals, I made what I now realise was an impulsive choice.

Without really considering the important family events I would miss, I booked a trip to Italy.

The choice came out of a reaction to what I was experiencing at the time. I thought: I feel like it, so I’ll just do it.

That was impulsivity.

Spontaneity, on the other hand, in the Zen sense that Watts taught, is something quite different. It is effortless action.

It is not forced. It is not calculated. But neither is it surrendering to every passing urge.

Spontaneity arises when the controlling self gets out of the way and the right action is allowed to flow naturally from the moment.

And how do we know the difference?

Perhaps it comes back to presence.

Impulsivity reacts.

Spontaneity responds.

Spontaneity comes from a calmer, more grounded place. There is still intuition, still freedom, still the delicious possibility of doing something unexpected—but somewhere within us there is also a quiet knowing. Does this choice align with who I am, with what I value, and with what really matters to me?

True spontaneity leaves us feeling light, joyful and alive.

This trip challenged me on so many levels. And yet perhaps that was its gift.

It has given me the opportunity to stop, to listen, and to ask myself a question that I suspect will stay with me long after the journey itself has faded:

Am I being impulsive—or am I being spontaneous?