Dancing All the Dances as Long as I Can

Writer and minister Robert Fulghum believes learning to tango is the perfect way to age gracefully

From NPR news, this is weekend edition. I'm Liane Hansen.

I believe in mystery.

I believe in family.

I believe in being who I am.

I believe in the power of failure.

And I believe normal life is extraordinary.

This I Believe.

Today's This I Believe essay comes from writer Robert Fulghum. He is best known for his book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Fulghum was parish minister of Unitarian churches for many years. He also taught painting and philosophy. Fulghum turns 70 this year. Nowadays, he splits his time between Seattle and the Greek island of Crete. Here is our series curator, independent producer Jay Allison.

If anyone has devoted himself to the notion of credo, it is Robert Fulghum. His most popular book opens with the fact that every spring he undertakes the writing of a personal statement of belief. The same task that defines our series. Personal belief is Fulghum's beat. When he sat down to write for us though, he struck on a subject that's not in his books, but is something you could fairly say, that he's obsessed with these days. Here is Robert Fulghum with his essay for This I Believe.

I believe in dancing.

I believe it is in my nature to dance by virtue of the beat of my heart, the pulse of my blood and the music in my mind. So I dance daily.

The seldom-used dining room of my house is now an often-used ballroom -- an open space with a hardwood floor, stereo and a disco ball. The CD-changer has six discs at the ready: waltz, swing, country, rock-and-roll, salsa and tango.

Each morning, when I walk through the house on the way to make coffee, I turn on the music, hit the "shuffle" button and it's Dance Time! And I dance alone to whatever is playing. It's a form of existential aerobics, a moving meditation.

Tango is a recent enthusiasm. It's a complex and difficult dance so I'm up to three lessons a week, three nights out dancing, and I'm off to Buenos Aires for three months of immersion in tango culture.

The first time I went tango dancing I was too intimidated to get out on the floor. I remembered another time I had stayed on the sidelines when the dancing began after a village wedding on the Greek island of Crete. The fancy footwork confused me. "Don't make a fool of yourself," I thought. "Just watch."

Reading my mind, an older woman dropped out of the dance, sat down beside me and said, "If you join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you do not, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance?"

And she said she had a secret for me. She whispered, "If you do not dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying."

Recalling her wise words, I took up the challenge of tango. A friend asked me if my tango-mania wasn't a little ambitious. "Tango? At you age? You must be out of your mind!"

On the contrary, it's a deeply pondered decision. My passion for tango disguises a fearfulness. I fear the shrinking of life that goes with aging. I fear the boredom that comes with not learning and not taking chances. I fear the dying that goes on inside you when you leave the game of life to wait in the final checkout line.

I seek the sharp, scary pleasure that comes from beginning something new -- that calls on all my resources and challenges my mind, my body and my spirit, all at once.

My goal now is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there wasn't another dance left in me.

So when people say, "Tango? At you age? Have you lost your mind?" I answer, "No, and I don’t intend to."

Robert Fulghum with his essay for This I Believe. Fulghum is in Buenos Aires right now for his three months of tango immersion. Two hours in the morning, music over lunch, two hours in the afternoon and then dancing all night. We asked if he thinks it might be hard to adjust when he comes back, he said, I may not come back.

We hope you might accept our invitation to write a statement of your belief at our Web site npr.org/thisibelieve. You'll find details and you can see what 1000 of others have written. for This I Believe, I’m Jay Allison.

Jay Allison is co-editor with Dan Gediman, John Gregory and Viki Merrick of the book This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women.

Support for This I Believe comes from Prudential Retirement.

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