I used to know someone who almost every time we were together we would end up dancing in the living room. Didn’t matter whose house we were at or what city we were in – there was always a dance party. I’m not talking about choreographed or swaying back and forth music – I’m talking about acting like idiots, jumping around, twirling around, and being 100% crazy dancing. And, we are talking about two grown ups with “real” and, at times, messy lives. It was a break from life – it was remembering to stay young.
This morning I was getting ready to work per the usual and had my Spotify playlist rotating through my workout songs. And, right there in what now seems like the most spacious bathroom in the world compared to the European bathroom I was using last week, I danced.
Some of my best memories of dancing weren’t the eight years I did it in a room filled with other bun headed girls but the humid summers spent with my best friends from college – dancing in the car, in our apartments making dance videos, swiveling each other around in rolling chairs across hardwood floors, learning new dance moves in sweltering hot establishments filled with tanned bodies living for the weekend, dancing in parking lots and in our front yards.
In those moments, we were presently in the moment. We were younger than we were, we were carefree. We didn’t care if we did the moves right or if people were watching – we just danced.
Sure, “learning to dance in the rain”, is a common phrase we hear but I never feel it’s literal. When’s the last time you danced in the rain? Or, your living room? By yourself or someone else? I thought about it this morning – how so many of us take for granted good health, bodies that work well and have not betrayed us.
I don’t know the person who danced like an idiot with me anymore and college friends have married and moved away, but those moments stay with me. Lessons of youth, remembering to have fun, to love life, to turn all the lights off and turn the music way up… and dance.
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“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.” – William Purkey
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