This morning over breakfast, Jung said something that resonated deep within me:

“Life is a dance, not a march.”

These words worked as a solvent on the crust that had been forming around my soul for the past few days. Until that moment I didn’t understand why I had been feeling heavy and my level of creativity had dropped. It was then that I realized I had started marching at some point last week and I never stopped. I was marching through my to-dos. I was marching through my chores. I was even marching through my music to some extent as well.

After all, I have people to email, files to find, and chords to master! No time to waste! No time to dawdle! I must be efficient and focused!

I see now that taking marching orders from my strategic mind was slowly draining the joy out of my days. Like Jung, I am committed to living with joy; I know in the marrow of my bones that I would rather die than to live without joy. I want to learn to waltz with my email, tango with my to-dos, and jive with my chores. But how?

At the moment I’m not even sure what living that way would look like. I know it would feel fantastic, but I’m having trouble visualizing it. I know the answers will come to me, but it will require patient meditation and probably more intense awareness and practice than I’ve ever done to learn these new moves. Still, even if I can’t visualize it, I’m grateful for the awareness of the shift I need to make to create more joy in my life. I’m so looking forward to my new life of dancing. I can’t wait!

Besides, although I may not yet know how to dance with life, I do know how to stop marching, and to my surprise, just halting my march makes me feel lighter on my feet already.