dance break.

I have long believed that if people had a mandatory dance break in the middle of their day, we would be about a billion percent happier. If we would just give ourselves a moment to be silly and to move our bodies... then we would feel a little free. We spend so much time sitting. So much time contained. What would it mean to really let ourselves let loose, to not just think and feel things, but to embody them? What if offices had dance rooms instead of break rooms? Or what if church leaders as they invited people to pray said, "let us move joyfully and dance," instead of "let us bow our heads?"

I think it would be good. I spend too little of my life dancing, and truth be told it is very difficult to be in a bad mood if you are on your feet, jumping, swaying, moving your limbs in rhythm.

Katherine Mansfield once wrote something about the way we treat our bodies like some kind of rare antique. She suggested that we act as though moving or being silly is shameful - so we contain ourselves. In the story "Bliss" she wrote, "She still had moments when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, or to stand still and laugh at -- nothing -- at nothing, simply... What can you do if you are [an adult] and turning the corner of your own street you are overcome suddenly by a feeling of bliss -- absolute bliss -- as if you'd suddenly swallowed a piece of that late afternoon sunlight... Is there no way you can express it without being drunk and disorderly? How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?"

She wrote that 1918, but 90 years later we are still just as idiotic. When we feel something, we rarely express it in any way except what is dignified or labelled as socially acceptable. Or better yet, we deal with it in the privacy found behind closed doors. But, have you ever watched the way a child plays? The way they run and spin and laugh with true abandon? I want that kind of freedom. They are unabashedly joyful. And I wonder if adults haven't so much lost joy, as much as we've lost suitable ways of expressing it.

Have you ever watched those "Where the Hell is Matt?" videos on youtube? Basically this guy goes all over the world, and just does this silly dance. Is seems completely absurd, but I think he's on to something. The truth is the world has watched those videos a million times because in them we see something we crave. Silliness. Fun. Humans just being human together.

In a segment for NPR Matt says,"When I dance with people, I see them smile and laugh and act ridiculous. It makes our differences seem smaller. The world seems simpler, and my caveman brain finds that comforting."

I am with Matt. I want to smile and laugh and be silly with people, For a few moments I need the world to seem a little less complicated. So, I'm going to try to make more time for dance breaks, and hopefully invite others to join me.

I hope that you'll treat yourself to a little dance break today, too.