Dance

…it’s one of those phrases I’ve heard time and time again, yet never properly understood.

The point of dancing, after all, is to commune with the people around you and interact with a piece of music, to express yourself, your truest self, fully, not just to yourself, but to the world at large.

While you are alone you are unjudged, yes, but you are still inhibited. There can be no expression, after all, without someone to express yourself to, no freedom without something to be free FROM.

We risk judgment to show the world, to show ourselves, that we don’t fear judgment, this is what makes us truly free.

The people with whom we dance, then, whether a partner or a crowded nightclub floor, are every bit as important, in this way, as the music, and to try to ignore them, to try to behave as though they were not there, prevents us from fully losing ourselves in music and movement and laughter and life.

And without the ability to lose ourselves thus, why bother dancing at all?

So let’s take this opportunity to retire the old cliché once and for all. It serves no purpose, it aids us in nothing, and it prevents us from living our lives in the fullest, most vivid way we can. And in this way it does us a profound disservice.

We are not shy, we are not introverted, and let us celebrate life rather than hiding within ourselves on the advice of some old, outdated adage.

Let us, instead, pledge to do its opposite.

Dance like EVERYONE’S watching.

And then don’t give a fuck what they think…