Shall we dance?

It’s the end of a long day. I’m at home, sitting absolutely still on the couch. I feel overwhelmed, like a vessel that’s filled to the brim. It’s the good kind of overwhelmed because I’m overwhelmed with happiness; so much so that I feel that I’m going to start crying any moment. I had a wonderfully rewarding day today. I presented my work for the first time in my department and received a very enthusiastic and encouraging response to my work. I attended a teaching workshop where I managed to convince a group of absolute strangers from impossibly diverse backgrounds that the human gut is a fascinating and wondrous system to study. But this overwhelming joy has very little to do with all of that. Instead it comes from a brief couple of minutes in an hour long tango class. 

I want for so badly to be able to describe it to you, but try as I may I feel as though no words could actually do this feeling justice. Have you ever been so aware of something that the world sort of melts away for a little while. Your eyes are open but you aren’t really seeing anything. You are awake but you aren’t really thinking. Your brain is just absolutely quiet; no inner commentary, no internal dialogue. It’s the loveliest sort of silence. I know my description sounds like being in a daze, but it’s not; in fact it is the exact opposite. You have such crystal clear focus that your actions actually don’t need any thinking; it’s instinctive, like a reflex. It’s you and your partner, the music and the movement; all intertwined in a way that you can’t really tell one apart from the other. You lose yourself for just a little while and become part of this ephemeral whole and it is magical. 

How much fuller and richer would our experience of life be if we could just be more like this. Live life like this perfect tango. Not react to or “deal with” the circumstances in our life, constantly analyzing if we are moving in the right direction or whether other people approve of where we are going. What if, instead, life were your dance partner. Circumstances lead and you follow; and just like in tango, you aren’t dancing for an audience but only for yourself, for the sheer joy of creating that movement with your partner. There’s no right or wrong move; there’s beauty in just being still and connecting with the other person, beauty in finding that sync where the lead and the follow are virtually indistinguishable. You can go slow or fast or even be still; but connected....always connected. And in that connection there is magic…..in that connection there is peace. 

What if we were to get up every morning and say to life….”Shall we dance?”