I can't believe I got here on Friday! Amazing. Usually I'm so excited that Friday is here that I'm busy doing this or that and have no time to post. Today I seem to have ample time. It's one of those lazy, slow moving Fridays. I did get out and walk around Greenlake and here I am writing this blog post, so it's not a completely unproductive day.
Lately I have been thinking about the term "team player." I don't think I'm a team player at all. In fact, the word "organization" or "organized" anything (organized religion, organized team sports, organized dinner engagements, organized group tours, organized work parties, organized charity events, organized labor) makes me want to run for the hills.
I'm not afraid of the word organized by itself. In fact, I strive to be organized, but it's not one of my strong suits. I have an aversion to "organized ______________."
So I decided to look up the word organized in the dictionary and here's what I found:
1. Functioning in an orderly way or according to a plan.
2. Affiliated in an organization, especially a union.
3. Having the ability to plan and accomplish things in an orderly fashion.
Number three seems okay, but number 1 and 2 sort of make me cringe.
I think it's the rebel in me. It's very strong. My intuition is definitely my strongest suit. I'm often spontaneous and like to have much of my schedule "unplanned" in order for the spontaneous to have space to move. I rely on my intuition about 85%-95% of the time. It has NEVER let me down.
Having things too planned or "organized" is the antithesis of spontaneity, but I do believe that organization and planning do have their place. If we didn't have them, we'd never get anything done. However, if they become the rulers of our lives, we've just squashed intuition and spontaneity...completely. When we unplug from intuition and spontaneity, our body, mind, spirit go on autopilot. We start to look outside ourselves for all of our cues, even if these cues no longer represent who we feel we are. We start to move in the same circles and patterns, comparing ourselves with others and never looking deeper to find our true paths.
Large organizations, groups, religions, etc. scare me. Have you ever seen a zombie movie. I think there was one out recently with Nicole Kidman called The Invasion or something like that. Everyone starts speaking the same, moving the same, talking about the same things, mimicking each other.
Workers of companies and businesses do this. They start talking in acronyms that no one outside the company understands. Religions do this too. In order to understand the acronyms, lingo, literature, you need to be initiated into the group or "programmed." It happens very subtly. Soon you find yourself speaking, dressing, behaving in a certain way. For a while, it can feel good to be "part of the team," but I'm positive this is what most often leads to mid-life crises.
To be truthful, I could use a little more organization in my life. Not the kind that makes me move like a robot and blankly stare into the distance, but the kind that clears space and puts things in order...declutters....so that spontaneity and intuition have space to move around.
I hope that spontaneity and intuition are always the rulers of my life and organization and planning are the servants. When it's the other way around, that's when jobs, life, family and even spirit or one's faith become tedious, at least for me.
Do organization and planning rule your life or do you allow intuition and spontaneity to lead you?
