The Smiley Face

It’s all about making people happy. That’s the key to dance, the key to relationships…perhaps even the key to this enigma called life.

To the right is a message board from my floor. There was a contest going on as to who could make a certain girl smile the most. The counts were based on how many smiles she sent over AOL Instant Messenger in a given time period. (Also note that some of the people were judged by how many times she frowned.) Maybe this is too simple a system to judge one’s success, but it’s often what it comes down to…

Last night Eric and I went out to Baltimore and on the drive back he said something that really made my night:

Style and all that aside, the one thing that was definitely true for all the songs you danced was that both you and your partner were really happy.

That’s my goal in dance: enjoying myself and making my partner feel good. I don’t think it’s so important if you look good or if you know a lot of moves, it’s whether you assure your partner that you’re happy to be dancing with her, and she the same with you. Chiles and I reflected on that the other night, with regards to Genea and Julianna. They’re great followers, yes, but they also smile and look at you the whole time. It just makes it so much better. You can’t have a bad dance with someone like that.

Now of course it takes some confidence to smile and let yourself enjoy yourself, but whenever it happens it’s just so great. My thought is this: if you make eye contact and smile then they’ll enjoy you that much better. So tonight, in my smiley shirt, I’m gonna go out dancing with the intent to do just that; I want to be contagious :).