Living in the Improv Scene Called Life
Why the most vivid chapters of our lives are the ones we never scheduled
Have you ever noticed how life's most vivid moments rarely appear on any agenda?
There's something about the unscheduled, the unexpected, the uninvited guest of spontaneity that carries a particular magic. We sense it instantly—that subtle shift in the air when the script we've been following suddenly becomes irrelevant, and we find ourselves in territory both terrifying and alive with possibility.
For me, the text came on a Tuesday evening:
"Rooftop jazz in 30. Coming?"
😬
I stared at those words, feeling them collide with my perfectly orchestrated evening of meal prep and Netflix. Two versions of my life suddenly stood before me—the one I had planned, and the one knocking at my door.
I've spent most of my life treating spontaneity as a natural disaster—something to prepare for, protect against, and ultimately survive. My early twenties were a monument to meticulous planning.
Every hour accounted for.
Every outcome predicted.
Every contingency considered.
And yet.
The moments that shaped me most profoundly were never penciled in ahead of time. They arrived unannounced, like strangers at the door with gifts I didn't know I needed.
The Script We Cling To
My relationship with planning wasn’t casual. It was a love affair bordering on obsession. In my very early 20s, my roommate once quipped that I scheduled spontaneity between 4:15 and 4:45 on Thursdays.
She wasn't entirely wrong. 😬
My planner wasn't just a tool; it was a talisman against the chaos of an unpredictable world. Each carefully color-coded entry promised that tomorrow would unfold exactly as I commanded. The future would bend to my will if I just planned thoroughly enough.
Then came the summer after graduation.
The summer when everything I'd mapped out vanished in a five-minute phone call.
"I'm sorry, but the research program has lost its funding."
Everything I thought I knew disappeared in a five-minute phone call.
I spent three days afraid to leave my house. The world suddenly seemed vast and unpredictable—a wilderness I had no map for. Without my plans, who was I? A navigator without stars. A conductor without a score. Just another twenty-something adrift in a city that didn't care whether I sank or swam.
On the fourth day, with my kitchen cabinet ominously bare, I ventured to a nearby café. The universe, with its peculiar sense of timing, placed an old classmate in line behind me.
"What are you up to these days?" she asked, all bright eyes and genuine curiosity.
For once, I didn't manufacture a polished response. I didn't recite my five-year plan or list my accomplishments like items on a resume.
"I have absolutely no idea."
The words hung between us—naked, unadorned, terrifyingly true.
Instead of the pity I expected, her face lit up like a sky full of stars.
"Perfect! We need someone for our pop-up art installation this weekend. You in?"
When the Script Gets Thrown Away
The first rule of improvisation isn't just a theatrical concept. It's a fundamental truth about living fully in an unpredictable world:
Say "yes, and..."
Accept what's offered. Then build upon it. Move with what appears, not against it.
The art installation was housed in an abandoned warehouse with concrete floors that remembered the weight of machinery long gone and windows that filtered light into geometric patterns across walls now covered in murals. The air smelled of paint and possibility, and the faint metallic tang of a building repurposing itself.
I found myself working alongside dancers, artists, and philosophers—people who approached life with a flexibility that both terrified and fascinated me. They moved through creative problems like water around stones—not forcing solutions but finding the natural path of least resistance.
One artist, Marco, never sketched anything before he began. When I asked about his process, he laughed, a sound like distant thunder.
"Process? I just start. The art knows where it wants to go better than I do."
The concept was so foreign to my plan-everything mind that it nearly short-circuited my brain. How could you begin without knowing the end? How could you trust the journey without mapping the destination?
And yet, as visitors moved through our creation, their shadows dancing against walls we'd built overnight, I felt something ancient and familiar… like we'd tapped into a conversation that had been happening long before we arrived. Something about surrendering to the moment created a kind of magic that no amount of planning could have engineered.
The Wisdom in Unlearning Control
I wonder if our obsession with planning is really about avoiding the most human truth of all: that we've never been in control. We're all improvising on a stage we didn't design, and in a play we didn't write.
That night on the rooftop, the one I almost refused because it wasn't scheduled, unfolded like a flower opening to moonlight.
The city sprawled below us like a constellation, while saxophone notes curled into the night air like smoke. The condensation from my glass left a ring on the wooden table—a tiny, perfect circle marking a moment I hadn't planned for.
We ended up at a table with an elderly couple celebrating their 50th anniversary. Their faces were etched with lines that told stories of a lifetime spent together.
"What's your secret?" I asked, leaning in as if to receive ancient wisdom.
The husband's eyes crinkled at the corners. He glanced at his wife with such tenderness it made my chest ache.
"We never finish each other's stories," he said, voice rough with years and love. "After fifty years, I still don't know how some of her tales will end."
It struck me then that presence isn't just about being physically present in a moment. It's about leaving room for surprise, about creating space for others to reveal themselves in ways your expectations could never predict.
Even with the person you think you know best.
Even with yourself.
The Art of Presence in an Unscripted World
A few weeks ago, one of my meticulously planned presentations crashed during a technological apocalypse, leaving me standing before fifty expectant faces with nothing but my unprepared self.
My old self would have disintegrated into apologies and panic.
Instead, I heard Marco's voice in my head: "The art knows where it wants to go."
I set my useless notes aside and asked a question I hadn't planned.
What followed was the most engaged, authentic conversation I've ever facilitated, not because I'm some kind of improvisational genius, but because I finally understood. Presence isn't manufactured. It's revealed when our careful constructions fall away.
Planning whispers promises of certainty. Improvisation offers something different, not certainty, but aliveness. Not control, but connection.
Maybe presence isn't just a personal practice but a conversation with time itself, a recognition that this moment has never existed before and will never exist again. And our only real choice is whether we show up for it.
Between Planning and Surrender
That summer, after the research project fell through, became what I now call my "accidental apprenticeship" in the art of unscripted living.
I worked on three more art pop-up installations, helped organize a community garden in a neighborhood that had been a food desert for decades, and took a road trip with people I barely knew.
None of it was planned.
All of it shaped me.
I think about the improvisers I've known, not just on stage but in life.
The friend who lost everything in a house fire and found, in the aftermath, a career helping others rebuild. The neighbor who turned an unexpected illness into a movement for healthcare accessibility. The colleague whose greatest innovations emerged from catastrophic mistakes.
They didn't just accept change; they moved with it. They found the melody in the noise, the opportunity in the obstacle. They understood intuitively that life's most transformative moments often arrive wearing the disguise of disruption.
Sometimes, I wonder how many perfect, unplanned moments I missed while hunched over my planner, trying to orchestrate a life that was already happening around me.
How many rooftop jazz nights?
How many conversations with strangers who might have become friends?
How many chances to say "yes, and..." instead of "no, but..."?
The Space Between Notes
The Japanese concept of "ma" refers to the space between objects, the necessary emptiness that gives form meaning. In music, the silence between notes creates the rhythm. In conversation, the pause allows for a genuine response rather than a mere reaction.
Perhaps a well-lived life needs similar spaces, planned emptiness where the unexpected can enter and reshape us.
My planner these days has margins. Breathing room. Pages left intentionally blank. It's less about abandoning structure entirely and more about holding it loosely, creating a framework that supports rather than constrains.
A trellis, not a cage.
Now, when friends text about unexpected adventures, my planner still sits nearby. But it's no longer a lifeboat; it's just one tool among many for navigating the beautiful, unscripted life that's always waiting to surprise us.
I've learned that presence blooms most vividly in the gap between what we expect and what actually shows up.
In the space between the life we plan and the life that finds us.
In the moment when we set down the script, look up, and realize:
This unplanned, imperfect scene is exactly where we're meant to be.
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About Alex
I’m equal parts old soul and curious wanderer, a farmer boy at heart, and a writer whenever I can corral my ADHD. Ultimately, I write for those who crave rest in a world that never pauses.
As a political psychologist, yoga therapist, and integrative coach—anchored by both research and lived experience—I delve into questions of identity, connection, and wholeness, which are the foundation of my Substack publication, Life as I See It.
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"Process? I just start. The art knows where it wants to go better than I do."
YES!
I've participated in a writing circle with a very gifted facilitator, and she always tells us, "Write the story that wants to be told through you." That's a very different perspective than "write the story you want to tell." I mean, both are good. Both are important. Both have their place. But one is about a scripted, rehearsed, planned act, while the other is...more open. Curious. Ready to be surprised.
Alex, I have been a planner nearly my entire life. Sometimes I wonder if I was born organized. Even early childhood memories are of me lining up my little ceramic cat figurines in a tidy row on my shelf, also straightening the books on my bookshelf, fluffing the pillows on my bed, picking up little pieces of trash on the floor.
I think having five kids has basically forced me to be more flexible, spontaneous, and amenable to messes. I still don't like them AT ALL (I scored very high on the orderliness/cleanliness trait in the Five Factor Personality Inventory). Like, messes give me PHYSICAL DISTRESS, but I have learned to live with them. Lean into them sometimes.
And yes, to be more open to spontaneity. To say "yes and..."
Man, I would have loved to go with you to listen to rooftop jazz. That's so up my alley.
Great reflections, as always, friend!
“They moved through creative problems like water around stones—not forcing solutions but finding the natural path of least resistance.”
Thank you for this. I’m recognizing that this past year on Substack for me has been a beautiful dance of putting aside the planner and following the art that reveals itself in front of me.
I liken it to walking g the yellow brick road that reveals one brick at a time. I just have to keep trusting that each brick appears right as I need it.