impulse

when i opened my computer today, i promised i'd write in whatever language made sense, without thinking too much. i can be highly impulsive — so much so that i could barely wait for wix to load. and as it took longer than my fingers could stand, i grabbed paper and a pen and started writing, desperately. as if it were an urge.

it's funny to me that in days like these the word impulse sounds almost offensive. hilarious, really — first, because if it weren't for impulse we wouldn't exist at all, and second, because ours is probably the most impulsive society there has ever been, in the very worst sense of the word. but let me explain. i looked up what impulse means, and here's what i found: it comes from the Latin impulsus — "a push against," "pressure," "a shock," and figuratively, "incitement," "instigation."

little did i know that would help me even more than i expected. impulse is pressure — but from whom? from within. and who are we to obey, if not the pressure we feel from inside ourselves? our utmost desire? seriously.

i'm not saying we should live by every drive the unconscious throws up, those primitive sources of wanting — not all the time, no. that's not it. but first, they do work in our favour at some level. and second, there's something else here.

yesterday i did something i later filed under impulsive. someone suggested we go to a festival i hadn't planned on this year. it had already been settled, in my head, that i wasn't going. but the idea must have travelled the corners of my mind — quickly, i'll admit — and with that ridiculous efficiency of mine, plus sheer coincidence, i had the ticket within the hour. let me be honest: i made myself wait that hour. i'd have bought it much sooner.

then i had time to sit with it — and i did have time yesterday — so i thought. maybe that was a different kind of impulse. not the purely primitive kind, the one with no thought underneath it, but the kind that's the product of months, of hours of quiet turning-over. maybe that single moment was the eruption of something that had been moving deep down all along, surfacing at last so you could finally do the one thing you were meant to do. which is to say: i do trust my impulses. not always, but most of the time. because i live in this passive gathering of things, of observations — when they matter, of course — and then, maybe, the thing is already overdue to be born, and only the force of an impulse can bring it to life.

what's not to trust in that?

impulse is obviously risky, too. i said obviously — but i could just as easily say that any decision is risky. the idea that thinking something over gives us any real control over what comes next is absurd. it just feels righter, doesn't it?

i'm not arguing against taking your time. i'm pointing at something that runs right alongside it: if we listen to ourselves — and with that, to our impulses — we might learn them a little. we might start to tell which one is only feeding a passing whim, and which is that small voice of the unconscious begging you, for your own sake, not to look away.

but we'd have to know ourselves well enough. and maybe even that won't be enough to make us fair judges of it. maybe only time can tell. maybe not even him. and so we're left to carry the weight of our choices — the well-considered ones and the impulsive ones alike.