Pure, untainted joy again at last!

Last night I went out dancing. I went out dancing again at last. 

There’s a live music & dancing venue in the town where I live where a band was playing songs by The Eagles last night and since one of my neighbors & I both really like The Eagles and had been trying to go to one of these “Eagles cover shows” since last summer, we finally went last night, last minute. 

And I had a blast. 

I hadn’t felt such complete, pure, untainted joy in months. Months. Probably eight months. And I really don’t feel this type of complete, pure joy often. Which is probably sad and definitely one of the main reasons I often feel profoundly sad, like a shadow in my heart, because I’m not getting life-nourishment that I need. 

I need fun dancing like plants need water and sunlight. 

To me, there’s something about dancing to music I enjoy that is like a force of life. It wakes me up and enlivens me and energizes me like nothing else does while also allowing me to let go completely, wholly, like I never otherwise do. 

I never really let go. I find ways of getting myself distracted, of relaxing, of decompressing, but there’s always a degree of control: be it yoga or meditation or intense exercise or extreme/risky adventures or hanging out with friends or reading or listening to music or singing: there’s always an aspect of control and self-consciousness. I’m always inside myself. 

I don’t use mind-altering substances, I’ve only gotten high on weed a couple times with a trusted friend and when I have a beer I don’t even have a whole one so as not to feel any loss of control. So I’ve felt a complete loss of control and an opening of my self only rarely: the couple times I got high on weed with my trusted friend; during my KAPT sessions last May; on some “runner’s highs” on beautiful trails; a few times of wonderful sex. And the occasions when I dance like last night.  

One of the therapists with whom I worked in Europe, a decade ago, followed a school of thought that maintains there are only four real emotions, or groups/families of emotions, which are innate to us and have physiological & evolutionary reasons to exist, namely: joy, anger, fear, and sadness. Each of these “major real emotions” or “emotional families” includes various others, as sadness would include grief, for instance. The “joy” category includes not only the various forms of happiness but also love: the “joy” category is considered, or represents, the category of emotions that “drive life” (and in such a way are physiologically/evolutionarily innate). 

What I experienced dancing last night and the other times I felt pure, untainted joy, for me confirm this interpretation of the “joy” emotional category: because in those moments the joy I feel is also love: pure, untainted, unconditional, unselfconscious love. In those moments, I feel like I’m just a drop in the ocean, but powerfully a part of the whole. In those moments, I perceive myself differently, I feel physically & mentally looser, and more profoundly well in my body. Those are the only few moments when I truly let go.

Last night on the dance floor I could feel myself let go, I could physically feel all the gripping and burdens leave my body, leave my mind, leave my soul. I was shedding, truly shedding, as I could physically feel the pain flow out of me and the grief peel off of me. The pain and grief were physically leaving my body & mind & soul last night, like water flowing out of me or layers of old skin peeling off of me. 

So wonderful. And liberating. 

But it wouldn’t have happened if I had been dancing alone in my room, even assuming I could get high volume music and special lighting. The presence of other people and my awareness of many of them watching me and enjoying my dancing or empathizing with my enjoyment made a whole difference. I need to be seen, physically seen. Now that I feel so well & aligned with my body, now that my body is so beautiful but also so aligned to how I feel within and how I see myself, I want & need the outer world to see me. 

I need moments of pure, untainted joy like out dancing last night. It’s the lack of moments like these, and of sharing moment like these with other people, that brings on that dark sadness within me that feels like a shadow in my heart & soul. If you want to call that darkness “depression”, call it “depression”: but it’s not going to be cured by a pill. Only joy, in the deeper or broader sense of “joy” as the set of emotions connected to life-driving experiences, and in the sharing of these moments with other human beings — that’s the only real, and lasting, cure.