I Hope You Dance

It’s a frigid Friday night in late January in Indiana. Dark, with a biting wind. I head into my local pharmacy carrying both a heaviness—after 11 days of the flu—and a hopefulness that the prescription I’m about to pick up will finally end this scourge.

As I reach the back of the store, I sigh. The line is long. I take my place, preparing for a wait.

And then, something completely unexpected happens.

For some unknown reason, the background music grows louder. The tall young man in front of me—toting a backpack and a head of curly brown hair—turns to me and asks if I’m a dancer. I clumsily reply that I’ve danced a time or two. He tells me that he is—and asks if I might dance with him.

So I do. In the aisle of the pharmacy, between the rows of bandages and antacids.

He twirls me under his arm. I do the same for him. Two steps toward each other, two steps away, lightly touching fingertips. Another twirl, followed by some boogie-woogie in the aisle. Then, smiles and laughter.

We chat. He’s a swing dancer. He’s not a student at the university, he says—he’s 38. I tell him I was 40 when I entered grad school, and he regales me with a story of a friend who went back to vet school at 60.

When his turn comes, I notice how easily he chats with the staff. He sees them. Engages with them—even those in the back, filling prescriptions.

My turn arrives, and as I begin to leave, the pharmacy tech motions for me to lean over the plexiglass barrier to hear her better. She whispers a quiet thank you—for being kind and dancing with him. She shares that he is a regular. And that he is a regular because, at age 38, he has only six months to live due to brain cancer.

I leave the pharmacy that cold night changed.

Grateful for a health condition that’s merely an inconvenience and not a life sentence. Uplifted by a single person’s infectious positivity. Moved by the impact one individual can have on others. Happy that I set aside ego and the fear of looking foolish—for just a few minutes—to dance with another human being.

As I reflect on this chance encounter, the words of Oriah Mountain Dreamer come to mind:

I have sent you my invitation,

The note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.

Don’t jump up and shout, “Yes, this is what I want. Let’s do it!”

Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

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Show me how you follow your deepest desires,

spiraling down into the ache within the ache,

and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward

to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day.

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Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart,

show me how you turn away from making another wrong without

abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

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Tell me a story of who you are,

and see who I am in the stories I am living.

And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

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Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be…..someday.

Show me you can risk being completely at peace,

truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment,

and again in the next and the next and the next….

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I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.

Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall,

the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.

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What carries you to the other side of that wall,

to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

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And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the

clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other,

let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving

those we once loved out loud.

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Take me to the places on earth that teach you how to dance,

the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart,

and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet

and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

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Show me how you take care of business

without letting business determine who you are.

When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us

shout that soul’s desires have too high a price,

let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

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Show me how you offer to your people and the world

the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember,

and I will show you how I struggle,

not to change the world, but to love it.

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Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude,

knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.

Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words,

holding neither against me at the end of the day.

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And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest

intentions has died away on the wind,

dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale

of the breath that is breathing into all being,

not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

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Don’t say, “Yes!”

Just take my hand and dance with me.

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(From The Dance: Moving to the Rhythm of Your True Self,  Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Harper San Francisco, 2001.

How often, over the last few days, I’ve thought about that moment and the profound impact it made on me. How, in the heart of darkness, glimmers of human joy and connection can reach deep and wide. How joy can rise through the most mundane of places and times.

But perhaps even more importantly—how often we miss those moments.

We are too busy. Too distracted. Too immersed in our phones. Heads down. Hearts shrouded.

What might happen if we paused, just for a moment, to look up and around? To acknowledge and greet the other human beings sharing this moment with us. To seek connection, one human to another—in the smallest of ways. A smile. A question. A funny remark.

As I reflect even more deeply, I face the hard truth: there was a time when I would have been mortified to dance in the aisle of a pharmacy with a stranger. I might have politely declined—or worse, ignored the invitation entirely.

How many times, I wonder, have I missed joy and laughter because of what the faceless “them” might think? Why does my adult voice so often stifle my impulsive, fun-loving, joy-seeking, wonder-eyed self?

So today, I banish those nameless, faceless naysayers to their dark corners. And I promise myself this:

I will connect with others. I will invite them to dance with me—for the sheer sake of joy and connection.

I leave you with one final call to dance: the song “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack.

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