there weren’t that many reasons to dance before i moved to new york. i would dance at clubs after one too many drinks, a slight sway in the car when a song i liked came on, and i had a subtle pep in my step on walks outside because the day was too beautiful to JUST walk normally. i honestly think i took myself way too serious before i moved to new york. i always felt some weird obligation to be cool or gaslight myself into thinking that any of physical expression of happiness was corny. my friends and i weren’t dancers and we didn’t feel the need to dance without the help of liquid courage…i never want to live like that again.
this mentality followed me to new york for a few months. i still remained stiff and stubborn—more paranoid of what people would think of me if i shimmied or danced, because standing out too much at west point was never something i wanted to do. my friends here LOVE to dance though. they play their music through loudspeakers and carry it with them everywhere they go. they come into my room dancing, walk down the halls dancing, and express their love of life through this medium of art.
a lot of the good memories i have here at west point are from moments in between dancing with my friends. my photo album is flooded with MANY videos of my friends and i dancing because it’s a thursday night & there’s one more day til the weekend, or dancing just because we were in each other's presence and a song we all knew came on. memories were made in dayrooms with the nostalgic game of just dance, in barracks rooms with jbl speakers & early 2000s r&b, in the middle of calculus class because we would have rather danced than find derivatives, and in starbucks parking lots with the help of apple car play & my jeep's sound system. there is something so pure and genuine about dancing with people you love, & i have learned that any day can be fixed with a small dance session.
i’ll never sign myself up for a dance show or be the first person to go to the middle of a dance circle, but damn…i really love to dance. i’m not sure if i love dancing more because i see my friends let go of all their stressors and worries for a few short moments or if i love it more because i feel free from the shackles of self-inflicted embarrassment. i like to think it’s a little bit of both.
it took me almost 21 years to realize why dancing has a contagious effect of joy on groups of people. why people feel the need to create mob pits & dance circles at concerts. and why people dance when they have their first bite of food. dancing just makes people feel good.
i don’t think I'll remember the annoyance of formations or the draining of homework as much as i’ll remember all the dancing that took place this past year. I'm more inclined to think fondly about the dean weekends spent in the barracks, bored out of our minds, that were fixed with just dance. these memories will live fondly in my mind as i think about how many people from my company came and joined in our silly little game of bootlegged-youtube-just-dance. i’ll think about how happy everyone was in that moment, even though the pressure of midterms were upon us, and how far away from home we all were. i will think about my friends, brooklyn and jacen, and how they ALWAYS came into my room dancing to a song i didn’t know—it didn’t matter if it was raining or shining, they were always dancing. i’ll remember my sweet novey, as she BLARRED bachata in the halls of c co & how, more often than not, we always found each other hand-in-hand dancing to the music i grew up listening to.
i hope you find time to dance every day, in public or behind closed doors. i hope you find people that give you no choice but to stand up and dance in between the harshness of life. & i hope you find a way to take yourself less seriously, but life shouldn’t be spent staying still. so, go on & dance a little. the earth is spinning, you can’t just stand on it.
with all my love,
♡steff
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