the next 50 needs more dance
Malawi dancing, May 2015
It's July, which is my birth month -- and this year is a big one, I'm turning 50! Because I swim in a gene pool shared by long livers (three of my grandparents lived past 95, and one lived until 102!), I figure I'm only halfway done. So to celebrate my birthday, I've decided that for every day for the first two weeks of this month, I'm going to share images and words representing what I hope the next 50 years will have more of. Time to say it and claim it, by gum. And maybe, if what I say resonates with you, you'll be inspired to get more of these things for your next 50 years, too.
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
~ Neil Gaiman
For several years of my childhood, I danced -- ballet, predominantly. I loved ballet, but not so in love with it that I planned on making it my career, so in high school, my parents encouraged me to stop taking lessons, and focus on my schoolwork, instead. But I never stopped loving dance. When I was single, I would go dancing literally every weekend -- in college, every weekend we'd go to a club at a local hotel where there wasn't a cover charge, and I'd drink sodas and dance all night long. When I was practicing law, I'd end up at a bar that played live music every weekend, and we'd close the bar down. I honestly didn't care whether or not I looked good -- all I knew is that I felt good. After all, I come from a country where music and dance are an integral part of the culture. Rhythm runs in my veins.
And then I married. And while Marcus is a man of innumerable wonderful traits and many passions, dance isn't one of them. In fact, he truly dislikes dancing. Which means that dance for me, in essence, stopped.
But maybe it doesn't have to stay that way.
So for the next 50 years, I'm going to make sure that there's more dance in my life. Maybe it means taking classes again. Or coaxing Marcus to go with me to more live music venues. Or a few solo dance parties.
In any case, in the words of Trinidadian superstar Machel Montano, time to shake up meh bum-bum.
Soundtrack: Shake yuh bum by Machel Montano & Timaya, for self-evident reasons.
Also for my birthday, I thought I'd give a nice, deep discount to one of my most popular online courses, GLOW: a 21-day ecourse for claiming your light! So if you'd like to get more light in your life, enter coupon code WATCHMEGLOW for 30% off the course. It really is a great course: one participant said she was so happy to rediscover "how blessed I am in my life"; another said, "GLOW came into my life at the perfect time. It is slowly changing my mental state and I have been focusing on the positives for the first time in ages." So join me. It's the perfect self-care for the summer.