#54: a free life feels like improv
"will you come to Target with me to get a mouse trap," leaving room in your life for spontaneity, awe, and hanging out
Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you for being here! And thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music.
I saw a video the other day that was making fun of the things we ask our best friends to do with us.
“I have to go to Target right now to get a mouse trap and face wash. Do you want to come?”
“Hi what are you doing? I was just gonna ask if you want to come over and sit on my bed while I fold my laundry?”
“Hiiiii um do you want to come over and watch YouTube with me?”
“Hey I don’t know what you’re doing right now but if you’re free do you want to come with me? I have to drop off my tax forms to the postal service and then we could do like coffee and lunch after. Like make a day out of it?”
I laughed when I saw this because it’s relatable. And also because it was a good reminder of the importance of having time to kill.
I feel my best when I have things to look forward to and enough spaciousness in my days to experience awe. The funny thing is, it’s not usually the quantity of time that matters. It’s an attitude towards it.
A free life feels like improv.
Not overly rigid.
Leaving plenty of room for serendipity, for surprise.
Having enough grounding and structure to make you feel sane. But only insofar as it supports your creativity.
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. And too much structure can make us feel urgent and flat. Too much creativity, on the other hand, can make us feel groundless and meandering.
Urgency is a word that has been coming up a lot lately. Urgency to get things done. To rush through. To context switch like a monkey changing the channel, glimpsing previews of several things that you want to watch but never landing on one long enough to get a true feel for it.
This usually happens when we feel out of control in one area of life and are looking to compensate in the rest.
It also usually is a symptom of deriving too much of your worth from external sources.
The things that actually matter do not feel rushed. Because if they actually matter, chances are you want to spend a long time thinking about them.
You get to sit with them. And the less rushed you feel, the more present you can be.
When you’re present, you have the mental bandwidth to be a better witnesser. And when you can witness, you can improvise.
One of my favorite parts about Reading Rhythms is watching improvisation unfold in real-time. For those who have not attended one (yet), the format is as follows:
a) everyone brings their own book
b) we hold two 30-min reading blocks w/ piano playing in the background
c) in between, there’s a one-on-one breakout session in which you’re encouraged to talk to someone you don’t know
d) at the end, we facilitate group discussions around all of our books in groups of 10-12
The ending discussions are incredible because of the wide range of books that people bring. Instead of going around in a circle, we encourage everyone to listen intently to those who share and if a point from someone else’s book reminds you of a thought prompted by your own, you are invited to “pull the thread” of conversation. We create a web of ideas between books. Which, considering the title of this newsletter, is very much my cup of tea.
And what I love about this thread-weaving format is that it invites you to be improvisational. You have to listen carefully to those who share before you and decide how to tie your book in on the fly. There’s something awe-inducing about it. You almost surprise yourself in finding the “right” thing to say and a good moment to jump in.
And I think what feels so good about this is that it’s not planned. There’s nothing rehearsed or forced. We get to practice being playfully creative in community and it activates parts of our brains that lie dormant in other social settings.
A global Gallup poll came out in October 2023 stating that 1 in 4 people feel lonely. And the highest % of loneliness was felt within the 19-29 age division. 27% of people in that age group reported feeling very/fairly lonely and 30% reported feeling a little lonely. Those are insane statistics.
In a world that feels very out of our control, we often overcompensate by clenching tightly onto the time that we have.
Some of this loneliness stems from not having enough time to meet new people or spend time with the ones that you already love. Another part of it comes from having such an iron-clad grip on time that you miss out on the moments to hang without an agenda. To do random shit. Many of my favorite memories from all of life— and from this past summer in particular— were the ones that totally took me by surprise. No agenda. Chance encounters. Starting in one place and ending up on the other side of town. Impromptu silent discos over the Williamsburg bridge. Prolonged park days. Spontaneous lake excursions. Diner pancakes. Having enough bandwidth, both in terms of time and headspace, to say yes to things you genuinely want to do in the moment.
We don’t give ourselves enough time to socialize in general and when we do, we tend not to do things that feel super fulfilling. We eat and drink and spend money, which then perpetuates the lifestyle-creep-control cycle in which we overengineer more so we can keep up with the Joneses.
All of this results in not having enough space for awe. Not letting ourselves be surprised by how good it can get.
I was reminded of this when I woke up on Saturday morning without a thing scheduled for the rest of my weekend. I was with a girlfriend and we spent the day allowing ourselves to be led wherever we wanted to go. We let the day surprise us and it resulted in much richer conversations and genuine moments of childlike joy.
I really do think the greatest moments in life are the ones that feel like improv.
In order to improvise, we need to be present. In order to be present, we need to give ourselves the time and spaciousness to play. Without an agenda. Without clinging to an outcome.
Maybe that means going to pick up a mouse trap from Target with your sister. FYI, Rae, I will do this with you literally anytime.
Maybe that means going on a 15-minute walk in the morning down a street you don’t usually follow.
Maybe that means making plans with friends and allowing yourselves to play it by ear. Or even planning an activity that requires improv. Like making a collective art project. Or attending Reading Rhythms ;)
Each of us has different needs for structure and creativity. We often seek salvation by trying to crack the code of the perfect productivity system that will solve all of life’s ailments. But the reality is that life is transient. Our circumstances change and what works now may be different than what worked in college or what works as a new mom.
Once we’ve admitted to ourselves that we’re never going to figure it all out, we’re never going to have the perfect calendar that makes us feel all under control, then we can surrender to the practices that help us sit with the inevitable ambiguity of life.
Art is a big one.
In Your Brain on Art, Susan Magsaman and Ivy Ross talk about the relationship between art, curiosity, and ambiguity.
The arts are particularly good at cultivating our curiosity because by their very nature they tap into our need to understand and to be moved, and at the same time, to be comfortable with ambiguity. When we see something or feel something that speaks to us, we become interested without judgment and seeing what emerges becomes an excellent prompt for personal insight. Art, in this way, becomes a vehicle for curiosity, and ultimately, discovery about ourselves and the world. (173)
“Art” can be so many different things. And you don’t necessarily need to be producing it to experience its benefits either.
To me, living a creative life does not mean producing something every day. It means leaving enough room in your days in order for your lenses to be cleared. In order to be a better witnesser and filterer of information.
And to return to my initial point, living a fulfilling life requires space to squander time with your friends and the people that you love.
talks about this in her excellent piece, “When did you last hang out?”She describes the benefits of a day of meandering nothingness with a friend.
That I felt connected to my friend while wiping biscuit crumbs off her sofa isn’t all that surprising. There’s now reams of research to show that in-person interactions deliver a connective magic that other forms of communication can’t match. But besides being face-to-face, there’s a texture to this kind of social time that makes it particularly potent, says Sheila. ‘Improvisation is a central element of the way that humans connect with each other,’ she tells me, pointing to the ad hoc, loose way that children interact as a blueprint for creating connection. ‘It's a way of interacting that we lose touch with as we age, but also something that feels more impossible to us because the way our lives are so scheduled.’
The best conversations are the ones that surprise you. Someone is sharing a story and for god knows what reason, your brain lights up with a disjointed analogy that ends up working perfectly and takes you both in a direction that you wouldn’t have otherwise landed upon.
That’s where delight is found. But we can’t get there if we’re too busy, too rigid, and too structured.
Improv, by its very nature, happens in the inbetween moments. It’s found in unexpected places and has the most profound effects. It really is a salve for loneliness.
It’s why we love to watch people perform live.
It’s why watching my friend Ben rip a freestyle recap of a night is the coolest thing ever.
It’s why listening to strangers weave threads of ideas together through their multidisciplinary books is awe-inducing.
When I first moved to New York, I was awe-struck by how much serendipity occurs here. I met my best friends in the city by showing up to a rooftop party and getting passed through a chain reaction of introductions that had enough randomness in it to feel inexplicably divine.
It’s easy, though, to forget that. To grow rigid again. To start enforcing more structure to keep you ‘grounded’ but overdoing it at the expense of allowing continued serendipity to delight you again and again.
There’s a new year right around the corner. When we set goals or even just try to envision what we want out of the year, we tend to be a little self-flagellating. I invite you to leave some spaciousness in your conception of what you want 2024 to be like to allow room for it to astound you.
What if it’s better than you can currently fathom?
There’s a good chance it will be. And if we continue to maintain the humility of knowing that we are never going to have it all figured out but are willing to be delighted by the end results, then I think we give ourselves more of a chance to let the improv of life take us to where we ultimately want to go.
That’s all for this week!
Pick up a mouse trap with your sister.
Do something random and aimless enough to allow yourself to be surprised.
With so much love,
Char
Char’s Web Song(s) of the Week
Xandra’s Curation Corner
**An always thank you to my brilliant curator and friend, Xandra Beverlin, for tying this whole newsletter together with her recommendations of Larry Madrigal this week!
Here are her notes:
So his work essentially is the perfect embodiment of this fantasy-like awe that we can find in daily life, exactly what you’re getting at with the silliness and time to kill
Its also so, so warm
Special thank you to
for quoting me in her piece New York, New York this week! Check it out for some great NYC recs from people in her circle :)All past issues of Char’s Web are available for reading here. A few samples below…
#1: A first of many.
#43: the slobs I peeled off the street
#49: we have to be orderly on the instant
#50: the soundtrack of “Up”