Just Do It

You know you have those days—the wrong weather, the wrong answers, the wrong smudges on the soul, not to mention that dastardly, lingering migraine.

I woke to that at three a.m. and couldn't shrug it, and as I looked ahead to the day and my afternoon ballroom dance lesson with Jean Paulovich, I had one prevailing thought: Well, that will surely be rich.

Funny thing: It actually was. Because by the time I walked up that tall flight of steps, put on my sand-colored shoes, and slipped out onto the floor, I'd battled all the battles I could battle in one day and my mind was spectacularly clear. The first dance was a waltz, and I yielded. The mambo was next, suspiciously swooshed, and then the cha-cha didn't defeat me, and the rumba was slow where slow was right and contagiously fast at the quicks. Even the jive didn't thwart me as the jive often does—it was (and this is strange) more right than wrong.

Why is so much of life that much easier when you stop fighting with yourself? When you cast off your own self doubt, your disappointments, your melodramatic exasperations? When you just shrug your shoulders and do? When you stop thinking, and dance?

Oh, dance.