Dancing With Myself

It's Saturday night, and I am home alone with my two youngest children (aged 3 and 7) and despite the continued winter temps...I find myself feeling peppy.

I cooked dinner for my family. My oldest girl and her boyfriend are vising from Cleveland and they traveled down to see the local high school play. My 16 yr old son is helping with the behind-the scene stuff and my husband went to see the play as well.

I found myself throwing on my headphones and dancing around the house. It occurred to me that this feeling of freedom, this total lack of self-consciousness, does not happy often enough. Not only for myself but, as I suspect, for others as well. Why do we become so worried about how we look? My youngest children will flail about to music like they are having seizures, all the while pure joy is apparent in their every action.

I think that we, as adults, forget how to just let go. Let go of ourselves and lose ourselves completely in a moment. Whether it's to sit quietly or to dance like no one is watching, we forget to just live. We all seem too concerned with how people view us, or being vulnerable because someone saw us doing something goofy - like dancing alone in our living rooms.

We have so many responsibilities and worries that weigh us down, why shouldn't we enough moments of feeling light and free? I was caught by a friend dancing around with my kids once. When I realized that person saw me, I was momentarily mortified but then they chuckled and said it was the most fantastic thing they had seen in a long time. From that time, and for a long time to come, I stopped worrying about people seeing me being silly. Of course, another child and an added 15 lbs made me go back to being self-conscious though I hadn't realized it did until this very moment.

At this very moment, I decided to take back my personal freedom, my freedom to stop being so damned serious about myself. Not only did I dance around my house like an insane woman, I found myself smiling for absolutely no reason. My two youngest children walked up to me laughing and told me they loved me, just randomly. I assume they could perceive my contentment and wanted to express their feelings about it. Either way, I promise to be free and goofy more often.

As someone as said before, why take life so seriously? No one gets out alive.