“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” – Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve always enjoyed plays…even though in Guyana most of us read plays rather than see them. I guess I was saved by having a good imagination – and given to even reading stage directions! But it says much about my disposition that one of the things I remember from studying plays is that the phrase “winging it” has a theatrical origin.
Seems there were always one actor or another who’d be busy cramming their lines at the last minute, as they “waited in the wings” of the stage before getting their prompt. They were “winging it”!!
We’ve all been in situations where we’ve just had to just wing it. You know…just doing something on the fly. Sometimes we even put ourselves into those situations – by procrastinating and leaving everything to the last minute then bluff our way through a test or a presentation.
As students we do that a lot, usually patting ourselves on the back for pulling another fast one over our teachers. I don’t think we ever really got away with those slapdash attempts though, somehow I think our teachers knew. Maybe because our presentations were full of gems such as “Umm… well…umm…and then….like….yes well”. Faultless elocution, that.
But of course, one can never, ever prepare oneself for all the contingencies of life. And inevitably we find ourselves in a situation where, despite our preparation, we have to just improvise our way out of the problem. In those instances, we have to try to be a bit more flexible, to be willing to accept things for being what they are, instead of how we want them to be. And once we don’t spend time panicking about why this is happening to us, but rather think up a new plan of action, we might be surprised that the end result might be better than expected.
But it really goes back to your preparation. While you mightn’t have anticipated the exact problem in front of you, the same facts you imbibed will just have to be redeployed in a different way to come up with a solution. And this is what we call “creativity”. So we should always expect the unexpected and start preparing ourselves to have to think on the spot or make quick decisions, outside the “box” we usually create for ourselves.
And every day we’re thrust into new and unexpected situations. We could show up at a meeting, expecting other people to take charge, but for whatever reason, they just can’t. We could be the ones who step up to the plate. We can adapt to the new role of leader and sometimes we’ll find that it’s a position we thrive in.
And of course there are the little improvisations we make every day. Singing a song and can’t remember all of the lyrics? Most of us just make up new ones. Do the new lyrics always make perfect sense? Nope, but that’s fine since half of the pop lyrics out there don’t make sense anyway – and you can always “go nasal”!!!
But improvisation can be difficult if you’re set in your ways or if you completely spazz out if things aren’t going completely to plan. It’s good to plan ahead, don’t get me wrong – I love planning and making nice organised, colour-coded timetables – but it’s when you put more importance on following the exact letter of the plan than doing the actual task, that things become problematic.
Remember the advice of old Robert Burns – “The best laid schemes of mice and men aft gang aft agley (oft goes awry)”. So go with your gut feeling – the answer’s already there.
