Play 208: Act Before You Think

CHARACTERS
VINCENT, 17

(He stands in the middle of the stage. Throughout the scene, he paces back and forth intermittently.)

VINCENT
You know, they always say, think before you act.

(Beat.)

But, to me, that expression is kind of a contradiction. Action and thought are completely in opposition, the more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

(Beat.)

I find if I think before I act, I just never end up acting. There’s so many possibilities for seeing the negative aspects of any situation that if you think enough you’re bound to convince yourself that whatever it was you were thinking of doing isn’t really in your best interests to do.

(Beat.)

That’s the problem—in theory, there’s always an infinite number of things that can go wrong, so even if in reality it’s far more likely that none of them will actually happen, until you actually do it you can never really know.

(Pause.)

Another thing that bothers me is sometimes to try to resolve all of that, people say, well, just don’t think about it.

(Beat.)

But that’s completely impossible, thoughts aren’t something that can just be stopped at will. You can’t just turn your mind off, no matter how much you might want to be able to.

(Beat.)

So I guess the only way to really get anything done is to just act immediately. That way, even though you can’t ever truly stop thinking, if you act immediately based on impulse, you don’t give yourself enough time to think.

(Beat.)

I mean, of course you still think about it, even if for an incredibly small period of time, but once you’ve just done something, even if you think about all the problems with it, you can’t go back.

(Beat.)

So you can’t really think before you act. You can act before you think, sure, but not the opposite.

(Beat.)

Or at least that’s what I’ve noticed.

(Beat.)

I don’t mean to say that acting without thinking is necessarily the best way to do things. I mean, I guess if you didn’t think first, you could end up doing a lot of things that you would regret after having done them.

(Beat.)

But you know what’s my biggest regret?

(Beat.)

Not having done anything I can regret.

(Beat.)

Sure I don’t have those embarrassing stories told about me, because there aren’t any really, and there never seem to be rumors told about me, because there isn’t really anything that I’ve done that they could work off of. But who cares?

(Beat.)

I’d take embarrassing stories and rampant rumors any day if it would mean that just some of the time I would have something good happen to me. Something interesting, something new, something spontaneous, something crazy, something that’s not just the same monotony. Something…

(Beat.)

Just…

(Beat.)

Good.

(Pause.)

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is…

(Beat.)

Think before you act?

(Beat.)

Fuck that, act.

(Beat.)

Act. Act. Act.

(Beat.)

Thinking never seems to accomplish anything.

(Beat.)

But, maybe I just say that because I’m the one who always thinks. Maybe we all just want to be whatever we aren’t. I mean, whenever I talk to people who tend to just do things, they always say they wish they could be less impulsive and think things through before they did them.

(Beat.)

But I can tell you this without hesitation—I’d trade places with those people in a heartbeat.

(Beat.)

That’s all I can say for sure.

(He walks offstage slowly, with a pensive look on his face.)

(Blackout.)