Lindsey Gelwicks is a senior journalism major and writes a column for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper or The Daily.
Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to be wildly spontaneous.
“Who wants to go to Canada?” The question wasn’t directed toward me, at least not initially. Who just picks up and goes on a road trip to another country with someone they just met?
Three hours later, I’m sitting in a booth at the Locker Room, one glass of beer empty on the table, another still half full in my hand. As we sat and talked, my 2 p.m. class had come and gone.
“So you really want to go to Canada?” This time there was a note of seriousness hidden within the original joking nature of the words.
A million thoughts raced through my head jumbling together into big ball of mush that nobody could possibly pick apart. Adrenaline pumped through my veins. Who goes to Canada with someone they had just met three hours earlier?
“Yeah, let’s go.” I felt the words escape my mouth hardly believing them myself. I couldn’t tell if it was me doing the talking or the two glasses of beer that were making that were now making their way to my head.
My heart pumped in my chest as I tried to control my leg that was jittering uncontrollably under the table from the excitement.
College is one of the best times in life to be spontaneous. Most of us have no serious job or any no kids relying on us to be a responsible parent. It’s the one time that we can get in a car and go wherever we want to without a care in the world.
I had never done something this spur of the moment in my life. I was the kind of girl who kept a strict schedule. Flip to any page in my planner and a jumble of reminders about meetings, assignments and other to-dos are scrawled across the page, each one color-coded. A page a month from now looks essentially the same as the current week.
And here I was planning a trip to Canada with someone I barely knew yet felt like I had know forever.
The buzz created by acting without a care in the world followed me into my 4 p.m. meeting and all the way through my night class.
“You still want to go to Canada?” read the text on my phone.
“Yes,” I quickly replied.
And that’s when the buzz died. Suddenly, the logical, analytical side that had controlled my whole life kicked in.
“Wait. I don’t know. Let me think about it.”
In that instant, I was back to being my usual self. The one who thinks too much about everything and worries about things that don’t matter.
There’s a long list of things that can go wrong with any spur of the moment decision. But the pros side of the list only needs one item: what if it goes right?
If it goes right, you have an amazing story to tell and a memory that will last a lifetime.
And that’s what makes life worth living, isn’t it? All of those crazy moments that you can laugh about later and the times that make you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt before.
Sixty years from now each of us will have a lifetime of crazy stories to tell that our grandkids will never believe. They’ll be stories that will make them go wide-eyed with disbelief that the wrinkled person sitting in front of them could have ever done something like that.
Two weeks ago an insane trip to Canada could have been one of the stories.
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