With less than a month’s notice, I’ll soon be going to Iceland as my last voyage of 2017 – capper to a couple of amazing years’ visits to places like Havana, Kauai, Toronto, Prague, Berlin, Edinburgh, London and the Grand Canyon. Spontaneous? Sure, but here’s the ironic little secret that “spontaneity” doesn’t want you to know: Carpe Diem takes a little something called prep.
When a great friend proposed hitting the island on the Arctic Circle with only a few weeks to plan it was an easy “hell, yes!” This may sound like an impromptu choice, but it’s actually the result of months of work at learning how to live in in the moment. There are lots of handy slogans and guru recommendations about how to do it, but for many of us, thriving in the now is incredibly hard to practice.
Why? A thousand reasons. Maybe we’re indecisive or anxiety-ridden. Perhaps we’re fearful that our choices will be wrong or rejected by those we care about. Sometimes we’re tired or poor or just unable to exercise the opportunities life presents.
The opposite of recklessness, I’ve come to believe that true spontaneity requires a kind of well-honed and perpetual readiness along with voluntary faith – in ourselves and all that’s around us. When we don’t have enough confidence or trust in our intrinsic being to risk vulnerability or possess any genuine faith in others and something greater than ourselves, the fall back is fear and doubt, the champion fuels of complacency and inertia.
At some point along the way I became a wallflower who never took any leaps. It’s been the hardest effort of my life to turn that around, but these days I try to leap whenever I can. I still get scared to voice to family and colleagues my authentic needs or beliefs, to look silly doing something or to tell him I miss him, but I’m getting there. And when I got the chance to leap to a far off and wonderful place with someone I adore, I said yes.
One more leap down, zillions to go. Iceland, I’m comin’ for ya!