Don't look. Okay, now you can look. Wanna dance?

"Dance like nobody's watching;
love like you've never been hurt.
Sing like nobody's listening;
live like it's heaven on earth."
~Mark Twain

The first line of this quote has particularly been on my mind lately. Anyone who knows me knows I love to dance. In my pursuit to get fit, dancing at home by myself has been an integral component of the journey. I just turn up the tunes and can't stop moving to the music--one of my favorite ways of burning calories! I love that I can creatively express myself in this way. It's both freeing and brings me joy.

My aunt pointed out recently that my dancing genes must have been passed on to me from my grandmother. This was quite an honor to me in a way that is too profound to mention here--I will have to elaborate in another future post and include the poem I wrote following my grandma's death.

This morning as I was driving to my basketball game, I thought about my latest attempts to dance as if no one is watching, and I arrived at some new insights on the irony surrounding my experiences. First, a little background story:

A couple weeks ago I was out dancing with friends. After one dance event ended, the crowd began to thin out, but a friend and I stayed and kept on dancing. Normally the venue starts to fill up again as the night wears on--but on this night the dance floor remained unusually sparse. It seemed a shame to not take full advantage of the free and clear dance space! I remember consciously thinking to myself, "I'm just going to dance like I'm at home in my room." In other words, strip away any veil of self-consciousness and just let myself dance freely from my soul, pretending like no one was around to watch me. It felt good.

Then, last night, I was out dancing again. I remembered earlier on in the evening, this time, to consciously remove that self-conscious layer that sometimes creates a thin film between me and the rest of the world. I always dance with my heart, but this one little conscious shift frees my soul in a different way.

This morning, as I was driving to my game and reflecting on my evening, I realized a funny thing: when you dance as though no one is watching, it tends to make people look! The night before, as I danced while pretending like no one was watching, I couldn't help but notice as I looked around the room, that various people were, indeed, watching me, and the light on their faces conveyed that they were somehow moved by the freedom of my expression. I found this to be a positive thing. It was an affirmation, for me, that I am moving closer to the kind of life I want for myself--one in which my own self-consciousness does not hinder me, but instead I am free to be more fully and totally present and engaged in the world and with the people in it.

The amazing irony in all of this is that sometimes the things we truly want for ourselves are the things that scare us the most; or, conversely, the things that scare us the most are the things that we truly want for ourselves. The one who challenges herself to "dance as though no one is watching" soon learns to embrace and welcome the fact that people are watching her while she dances. And in this she discovers a new kind of joy as she finds herself relating to the world in yet another fresh new way.