Dance Like No One's Watching

In my last post, I talked about the work of Brene Brown on shame and vulnerability.  As I said there, Brown's work is exciting, funny, and very challenging.  One way that I would summarize some of her work is that we have a choice in our lives: we can allow our shame and embarrassment to keep us from living wholehearted lives, or we can live wholeheartedly in the face of our shame and fear and vulnerability.

When I was a child, I looked around at all of the grown-ups in my life and I thought, 'These folks have it all together.  I can't wait until I'm like that."

What I now realize is that grown-ups sometimes do a good job of pretending to have it all together.  But shame, embarrassment, and the desire to 'fit in' and 'be cool' are enormously powerful influences in the lives of grown-ups, too.  Adults can be just as afraid of being called a "loser" or a "moron" or a "dork" as any teenager.

The last section of her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, is entitled, "Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and 'Always in Control.'"  Brown observes that, for many of us, dancing in public can raise HUGE anxiety.  If we do get out on the dance floor, we may be inhibited and stiff, or we may concentrate really, really hard on trying to impress other people with our moves.  What we may have a really hard time being, is free on the dance floor.  Free, in the way that young children are free when they dance, at least until the older people in their lives convince them to try to 'be cool.'

Brown writes, "For many of us, there is no form of self-expression that makes us feel more vulnerable than dancing.  It's literally full-body vulnerability.  The only other full-body vulnerability that I can think of is being naked, and I don't have to tell you how vulnerable that makes most of us feel" (Gifts of Imperfection, 119).

Too often, we can hold ourselves back, out of fear of being exposed.  We may sit on the sidelines, rather than stepping out onto the dance floor.  We may say, "I'm just going to enjoy watching everyone else dance," when what we mean is, "I am scared to death of dancing in front of other people."  We can withhold ourselves from others and we deprive the world of the gift of who we are, all because we are worried that our dance moves aren't ready for prime-time, and afraid that the 'haters' will make fun of us.  We give the haters way too much influence over our lives.

Brene Brown says that the Hopi Indians say, "To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak."  If this is the case - and it seems intuitively true to me -- then I hope that you'll step out onto the dance floor the next time you have a chance.  Dance like no one is watching.  The 'haters' in the world may try to make fun of us.  But the world will be better for it.