Sometimes you just have to shake your moneymaker – even if it doesn’t make you money anymore, (because let’s pretend once upon a time it actually did).
When life gets you down, you have to turn the volume up, get on the dance floor and shake it up. Last Saturday, that’s exactly what I did.
For Valentine’s Day, I took the Carpenter to the Elora Legion to see local band The Potion Kings play a live show and it was the best thing I’ve done for us in a long, long time. We had ridiculous fun and nobody got hurt.
I clarify that last statement by explaining that when I am immersed in really good music, especially live music, I tend to forget that other people are sharing my dance space. I get lost in the rhythm.
I don’t flail about with limbs like flying projectiles, nor do I thrash about looking to hip check innocent bystanders, but I do tend to zone out of the world and into the music. It’s my happy place. Sometimes I step on innocent bystanders or bump into people. It happens.
The Carpenter is not a dancer. Liquid courage and personal insurance are required to fire up his engines enough to get him on the dance floor. And the music has to be right.
Even my seductive dance techniques (What? You don’t know; I could have some) and come-hither stares from the dance floor fall short of enticing my man to twirl beneath the disco ball if public humiliation is a remote possibility.
But one of my Carpenter’s best qualities is his ability to accept me as I am – and I gotta dance. While he is content to watch the spectacle of the crowd, I need to be in the heart of the action. Nothing is more freeing than dancing.
The timing of last weekend’s event could not have been better. I say that because we both know there are hard changes coming down the pike, and we’re in it together – which may be the only thing that gets us through. It seems as if life is passing us by, faster and faster, and it’s getting easier to miss life’s little moments, the ones that deserve some expression of joy: report cards that have more Bs than the last one, teenagers who do the right thing, new adventures and good news about friends who really needed good news.
We mean to celebrate these milestones, but most of the time we don’t. There are hockey practices or school concerts, deadlines and meals to plan, with housework in between. We are so far into first gear we can’t even remember what it’s like to be in neutral and there is no time to go in reverse, much less park.
That’s how life goes. And we let it happen. It’s not a complaint, just an observation. Celebrating life is a reminder that we are in the driver’s seat.
When times are good, when the highs are high, we need to go full-on, jump in, roll with it and get lost in the rhythm so that when the dark clouds gather, we remember that there is always the option to dance in the rain.
So I say, if life is going to spin me in circles, I should get a turn on the dance floor.
Life is just too short not to dance.