all of it.

“Um, um…excuse me?”

I heard that over and over again while teaching tot dance. We’d be sitting in a circle doing our warm-up, stretching our bodies and pointing our feet–all while exhibiting all sorts of different emotions on our faces–when, inevitably, I’d get interrupted.

“Excuse me? Miss? EXCUSE ME?!”

“Yes?” I said to whichever tiny pink-clad whimsical ballerina was trying to ask me a question this time.

“Um, when are we gonna dance?”

And then I smiled and tried my best to explain. That we actually are dancing. Right now. That all of it–everything we do in this studio for the next hour is dancing. “This, right here,” I said, shrugging my shoulders up and down, up and down, “is dancing. Touching your toes is dancing. Practicing your splits is dancing. It’s all dancing, hon.”

And then a perplexed look came over the little face of the question asker. “But when are we gonna do this?” she asked, taking the opportunity to stand up and twirl in such a mighty frenzy that she landed solidly on her bum.

Trying not to laugh, I told her that I’ll give her time at the end to make up any dance that she wants, but until then, she follows me. And then I turned Winnie the Pooh back up nice and loud and we resumed trying to touch the sky with our creepy crawly spider fingers.

But it’s interesting how we are all that girl sometimes.

It’s easy to impatiently go through the motions of whatever it is at hand now, because we’re so anxious for the part when we get to twirl. In some cases, twirling may be a dream job, a significant other, a move to somewhere–anywhere!–better, prestige…fill in the blank. It’s different for everybody, but we all know the feeling of wanting to hurry up life and JUST TWIRL ALREADY!

We want to skip the exercises in the circle and just show the world our moves. But the thing we don’t always realize is that when we follow the exercises closely and carefully, we can eventually do the kind of twirling that doesn’t land you on your butt. Wouldn’t that be nice. That, really, What We’re Doing Now is the only kind of bridge that exists to What We Want to Be Doing Eventually.

So take what you’re doing now seriously. I mean, laugh and joke and make fun of most things, in general, by all means, but do it with the understanding that it matters. That it’s life. It’s all life. Just like that little girl was dancing the whole while–even though she kept asking when she’s gonna get to dance.

She was dancing the whole time.

And so are we; so let’s do it with intention.

And eventually, we’ll twirl.