WHITING: The upside of irrationality

I've been indulging a lot in irrationality lately.

Actually, scratch that&-it's not just lately that I've been doing so. I'm so neck deep in irrational living I don't know what to do with myself. I stay up late for no reason, end up sprawling out for naps in the Shelton study lounge and wake up only to sustain myself on mass-produced M&'M cookies and expensive coffee, reading Texts From Last Night when I should be putting a dent in the essays of Montaigne.

I can't figure out why it is I do this, besides the Freudian answer that I clearly like letting myself reject routine and live the unchecked (and literally unstudied) life.

"Everything I dumb this week is stupid," as my roommate would say.

And I kind of feel the same way &- while I've enjoyed the basics of class and extracurricular activity, I've by no means matured from one year to the next; certain times of my sophomore year of college have not only been definitively irrational, but borderline absurd.

I've attempted to hang a traffic cone in a tree. I've hid in a bush on Commonwealth Avenue only to shake its leaves from inside and therein freak out the passersby. I've jumped out at and "BOO"ed strangers. And I've witnessed my friend attempt to channel YouTube celebrity Remy and kick a moving car, only to break his leg.

It's the antithesis of normative behavior&-I am Youth in Revolt&-but I'm not sure that's a good thing. And I have no explanation for you, except that it's all been quite fun and I think, therefore, that I'll do dumb things some more. I've rationally(?) decided to embrace the irrational&-the random, unexpected, weird and purposeless.

That makes no sense considering how I reap nothing but ridicule and unstoppable laughter from my senseless behavior, but that's just it &- strangeness is all I have to lean on in order to escape the somber fact that without it, a day like the one before it is very dreary indeed.

I grew up with a family that espoused all forms of craziness. My dad and I violently rocked the car to our music at stoplights. My sister often randomly built wooden swings and houses out of twigs and Eiffel towers made of stacked macaroons. My cousin threw water balloons at fires. And my uncle likes to break into a rap from time to time.

Still I worry that I'm supposed to start preparing for an age of maturity in which I should be capable of making good decisions that aren't pointless and stupid.

And then I realize &- my time here isn't about "shoulds." I mean, you probably shouldn't kick a moving car if you want unimpaired bones, but life's about balance as much as it is logical planning. It's about sitting at my desk reading John Locke's "Second Treatise of Government" next to the purposeless orange-haired, naked troll that serves as my desk décor. It's writing an analytical essay, and then writing a love letter to no one.

Rationality is padding. It's sense and sensibility&-it's flossing regularly and folding your clothes&-but as such it's not infallible. Flamboyant spontaneity is far more exciting, if nothing else. If everything we did made perfect sense and led to a conventionally productive and useful end, one day we'd pull a Kakfa and wake up giant cockroaches. So we should take the chance to defy logic and do as many ridiculous things as possible. Within reason, I suppose.

I don't know why my friend made bird noises at the dinner table last night, or why my classmate skips to French, why we draw mustaches on each others' faces or why Alexa put salt in David's lemonade. All I know is that Lauryn and I like getting drenched from the rain too much to go back up the stairs and get our umbrellas.

Obviously my psyche is saying something. It's telling me to drop $7 on glitter glue, dip pickles in peanut butter and buy a giant bag of boba though I have no tea and no straws. I'll welcome the unplanned and the unjustifiable. I've got all of law school for the other stuff.

Of course, irrationality has its costs. But college is about regretting going to the awful frat party, but laughing at the decision later and getting down to business. It's about painting your canvas of a life with colors not otherwise expected in the composition and blending the surreal with the real. And making eye-roll-worthy metaphors.

We've got an irrational number of days here. So go do something stupid. And be happy.