Some months ago, spontaneously, I posted on facebook that my new motto is “Just Dance.” At the time I was thinking that “I don’t get enough exercise, I don’t have much ‘fun’ in my life, I’m just a blob who sits in a chair.” The phrase “Just Dance” – get out of the chair and move – was the reply from my inner wisdom.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about what, exactly, it could mean to “Just Dance.”

While I have occasionally performed as “a dancer” (I feel it’s presumptuous of me to apply that title to myself), what I really mean by dancing is to simply move spontaneously to music, doing so with attention, but not consciously. In this mode, even if I’m dancing to music I have not heard before, my awareness anticipates rhythm changes, flourishes, and other aspects of the music that can be responded to, or, better, embodied by a danced move.

In the last few days I’ve been thinking about how I might apply that mindset – with attention, but not with a conscious-driven carefulness – to other things I do. I think I might be on to something.