Thoughts on the approach half way thru

Walking the dog, listening to David Gray and dancing down the sidewalk.  This moment, asked by many a poet, it's this moment:  I'm alive, I'm smiling, I'm feeling nothing but good.  Why?  It's the dog, it's the 'just rained, will rain again, not raining now' season (some know it quite well and describe it just as 'March'), it's the dancing, it's the music, it's the memories that flood (fill?) my brain as I listen/feel/let go to music i've had SO many experiences in... but it's the dancing, really.  It's the dancing on the sidewalk, in public, past each house likely filled with a family.  A family, or people, i assume, wondering why someone would be smiling and dancing on the sidewalk.  That's not where one is supposed to dance.  Dancing, a thing that feels SO incredible in the body/makes the body feel incredible, a thing people used to do in public, in a group, outdoors:  there are certain places, certain times you do and do not do these things.  It hit me:  dancing is like a lot of things that are good for us/make us feel good/make others feel good alongside one another/is joyful, smile-inducing that has been moved 'inside', into a box, a literal box.

Dancing is held in clubs (a box with music)

Playing is behind a fence, discouraged anywhere but elementary school (a box with desks and doors)  

Art is framed and only for some (a box with things on the walls)

Theatre is in a black box

Worship is held in a massive, above ground tomb (another box)

All these things that used to be free/ public/ for all/ encouraged to share/ everyone is welcome to join.  These things have been put away, locked in a box, hidden behind a screen...

I turn 55 years old in a few days and I feel very lucky that I have my own key and the box is invisible.

  

For much of my life, I thought 50 was half way through your life.  

The mid-life place.  

And, if that's the case, I've used up five years already of what's left here.  

I've got to live out loud.  

If you knew the level of insecurity and search for happiness and peace, surging thru the me in this birthday photo from about 20 years ago, you'd completely understand why dancing on the sidewalk while on a dog walk is a radical moment.  One that I want to have over and over and over in my remaining however many moments/days/months/years I have left in this particular living thing.