Do you want to dance?

Do you want to dance?

I do ballroom dancing. It has become my favorite form of indoor exercise. It's a wonderful form of aerobic - a couple of salsa, mambo and cha-cha-cha do get the heart moving and it's a great way to clear the mind. And music lifts my soul. Sometimes, I trip on my own two feet. At other times, my toes get stepped on, involuntarily by a partner. Sometimes, we avoid a real disaster and stop in our tracks to let a couple swirl by. Whatever happens at my weekly dance practice, including the nights where dance partners are few, I never regret going. The music alone is worth it. Watching other couples move gracefully and picking up some moves or steps also makes it worthwhile.

Using the dance floor as metaphor for life, my question is: Are you on the dance floor of life, participating fully and joyfully, even if you trip or accidentally get tripped, or are you somewhere in the back of the room, by yourself, with a drink or with people you have very little in common with, watching those on the floor who are fully alive and do you secretly wish you were out there, waltzing, but constantly making excuses why you can't? Do you have expectations that the future will just look like the past and consequently, you let fear decide how you live or don't live? Are you choosing a safe and small life instead of a joyous one?

Marianne Williamson in her book: Enchanted Love: The mystical power of intimate relationships, talks about how "if (love) doesn't take your heart and make it explode in million pieces, only to fall back together again in some moment of enlightened understanding, then you haven't really loved. You've done the bourgeois thing perhaps, but let's not call that love."

Does your life follow the "bourgeois" model or the "love" model and make your heart explode in joy and understanding? I add the word joy because the absence or presence of joy is the best way to determine if a relationship or your life stems from fear or from love. If you can't spontaneously answer love and joy, then fear is making choices for some aspect of your life. If you wait until "things" get easier, you are fooling yourself. "Things" only get easier when we take action. Recognize that fear will show up at the mere thought that you can go for what you truly desire. Fear can keep you feeling like a helpless child. It can crush your dream, yet only if you let it. Remembering that FEAR means False Evidence Appearing Real, choose one small step you can take today to move closer to the dance floor.