I’ve been eager to dance lately.
I’m tempted to create a playlist, rent a dance studio for a few hours, and just let my body take over.
The kind of dancing where you stop thinking about how you look.
Because when your body is moving and your heart’s racing and your blood’s flowing…
You can’t help but feel alive.
And when I think about the life that moves through the body.
I’m reminded that our souls dance too.
Your joy. Your curiosity. Your envy. Your boredom. Your longing. Your restlessness. Your resistance.
They’re all movements
It’s the rhythm of your life humming clues.
What melody drains you?
What melody gives your soul the energy to dance?
I remember watching a nature documentary and learning something fascinating about honeybees.
When a honeybee colony needs a new home, a handful of bees fly in opposite directions to scout locations.
After each of them finds one they love they all come back to the colony and have a dance-off.
A better location gets a longer, harder dance.
Then the colony packs up and moves toward whatever new home is danced about most fiercely.
The bee’s dance conveys enthusiasm.
And that enthusiasm is data.
When our souls dance…
It’s enthusiasm….
That’s data….
Pointing us in a direction.
Sometimes it feels like a nudge. Other time like a pull.
A feeling you yearn for.
A place you keep thinking about.
A subject you can’t leave alone.
It often whispers before it speaks.
Subtle then all at once.
So you don’t need to know why something moves you.
You only need to notice that it does.
The soul often starts dancing before the mind recognizes the music.
It’s like the musical phenomenon called sympathetic resonance.
Where if you pluck one guitar string it can cause the exact same string on a nearby guitar to hum softly.
It didn’t have to choose to hum. They matched a natural frequency. So it danced.
You don’t choose what moves you any more than the string chooses to hum.
Your only job is to notice what’s moving inside of you.
And to stop apologizing for it not being something else.
I’m asking you “What makes your soul dance?”
Not “What music does everyone else want your soul to dance to?”
That is hard for adults.
Children simply move toward what they love.
Adults require some abstract signal of value.
We ask curiosity for a business plan.
We ask play to be productive.
Our soul screeches to a halt when every desire has to be useful.
And it’s so easy to fall into this cycle.
At first, we make what moves us.
Then people start noticing.
Soon, we start making what moves them.
But like the strings on separate guitars make each other dance, we must look inward at our own strings to notice what moves us.
Our job is to follow that sound.
And that journey is truly a dance.
You don’t need a whole plan.
You need the next honest step.
You move before you know every move.
You listen while you act.
You let the last step teach you the next one.
Maybe aliveness is less about having all the answers…
And more about becoming sensitive enough to notice what in you is answering.
What makes your soul dance?
Listen before the music stops.
Stay creative,
Way Walker
I love this one, you have so many gems. These lines especially are such good reminders:
"Maybe aliveness is less about having all the answers…And more about becoming sensitive enough to notice what in you is answering."
Thank you for starting a Substack so we have a link to share your posts, they are just so good!