The joy in spontaneity!

How often have you fretted when something did not go as planned? Perhaps you pined for a well planned weekend travel and suddenly it goes for a toss leaving you clueless about the uncertainty. I was in a similar situation but yet had a memorable experience which I want to reminisce through this blog. The initial parts are just my experiences and the revelations are concluded later.

I need not tell you how fabulous the feeling of seeing the clock tick past 16:00 hours on a Friday is. However, I wasn’t really looking forward to the weekend and was a bit petulant about the road trip to Slovenia which did not go my way. I somehow have a mindset for circumstances and I get queasy when they do not go as planned. Nevertheless, ‘Things could be worked out spontaneously’ I said to myself. Suddenly, I got a call from my friend Gokul to watch “The Dark Knight Rises”. Though it extended to the late hours of the night, my answer was a certain YES!

After the movie, I was asked by Gokul’s friends if I had an interest in skydiving the next day. Gokul was acrophobic and hence showed no interest in the offer. Hearing about the departure at 07:00 in the morning, I told them not count me in. After all, who would want to get up so early on a Saturday? More importantly, how can I decide on the fly and say yes? But this Saturday appeared significant for a reason. I had orbited the SUN for the 26^th time – in other words, it was my 26^th birthday! An early morning call from my beloved parents woke me up at 06:45. Lying on my bed, clueless, I instantly decided to fantasize my whim and put a check mark on the most awaited activity on my bucket list. It was at this moment, I decided to skydive.

Already a bit late for the departure, I called my friend Abhi who was kind enough to accommodate this change. He gladly suggested me to take the next connection along with others who had delayed his operations. Thank God! I still have a chance of making it I thought. For most part of the day, I ended up catching everything just in the nick of time. I bumped into my good old friend Shesh whom I hadn’t met for 2 years and guess what? He also had come to skydive – A small world indeed! I was keen about not wasting too much time on the camp and that my turn would come soon. And so was Shesh, who had optimistically vouched his return by 11:00. After a painful wait and just before our enthusiasm plummeted, we got our turn at 18:00 hours.

We were fully geared up for the dive from 4000 meters and the adrenaline levels were high enough to surpass the butterfly effect in our stomach. We boarded the aircraft and after 5 minutes, we assumed that it was time to jump. But to our surprise, it wasn’t even 1000 meters - the first quarter of the ascent.  We were reminded for every 1000 meters and slowly reached the 4000 meter mark. The tandem master did some final checks and prepared us for the jump. The doors of the aircraft opened, we were on the edge and seconds away from THE JUMP that could not be undone. I remembered that all through the way, I was making fun of this saying “If you do not succeed in your first attempt, then skydiving is not for you”. And soon I found myself in the moment of truth validating the statement for its verity. The experience has been recorded in the video below.

Satisfied with the spontaneous decision of skydiving, I fell back on my habit of static planning and thought of spending a quiet Sunday in Stuttgart. But my friend Shesh had already arranged a party with his friends and me in Heilbronn. I had a very splendid time and met Shreyas, Veda, Puneet, Gopal among others, celebrated my birthday by cutting a cake, spent a night filled with laughter and then woke up with a mild hangover. A nice topping to this weekend was a good game of cricket and the fabulous delicacies that whet my appetite.

May be I deviated here in cherishing those memories, but my point is really about the lesson learnt in retrospect. It’s the same position on my bed, before and after the weekend, where I was clueless. Clueless on a Saturday morning wondering what to do for the weekend and clueless on a Sunday night thinking about unexpected outcome of spontaneous events. Had I not decided to watch the movie, skydive or join the party, had I just repented over the inconceivable road trip and had I not decided to act spontaneously? I am not sure of what I would have missed. Of course I missed my home, parents and friends, but in their absence I found some set of events which fulfilled me to the core.

A thing well planned and executed is good, but, in the midst of anomalies, often it does help when we adapt quickly as there seems to be a ‘joy in spontaneity’.