“Don’t waste time when it comes time to dance.”- NEEDTOBREATHE

I’ve got a stack of five books before me. I’ve got two papers due tomorrow, three tests next week, and I haven’t showered. It’s 2 a.m. Scratch that, it’s 3 a.m.

But there’s music playing.

And I just can’t resist the urge to dance.

For some reason, NeedToBreathe always finds a way to speak right to my heart. Although school is important and studying is vital to survival here, we can’t forget to seize the opportunities laid out before us. What do we have if we never take the moments to enjoy life?

Jane Austen once wrote, “There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time." Time is so expansive, which is the point that Austen was trying to articulate by comparing time to a love that is just as expansive, yet I keep thinking back to time and all of the moments in it that we let slip by. I can recall thousands of moments, seconds, little blurbs of memories, yet I can’t recall all of the times I sat and stayed in to study. There is nothing remarkable to recount if we choose to avoid doing anything remarkable in the first place. And by remarkable, I mean doing anything or something, just not doing nothing. You can’t waste time when it comes time to dance, and you can’t waste time when life is before you, waiting to be lived.

Aside from the clear aspect of the insistent passing of time, this quote appeals to an intangible aspect--why would we waste our lives in the mediocrity of everyday things when we could instead relish in the greatness of everyday things? After all, “those who were seen dancing were thought crazy by those who couldn’t hear the music." People may see you as crazy, and we all very well may be, but why would you waste your time sitting on the sidelines and tapping your toes, as the world before you is swinging to the sound of music? Just like in your faith; why would you waste time living in the generality of a standard faith, a cookie-cutter belief, when instead you could dance with God, you could wrestle with him, to know Him and to understand who He is to you?

When you chase after the faith that you want and that fire that could fuel you, you can dance because I choose to believe in a God who would want me to dance and to rejoice in the happiness and goodness of the life He has made for me. Why would I waste my time getting caught up in the mediocrity of this world, in cookie-cutter faiths, in this materialistic society, when instead I could use that time to dance alongside God and take on this world with a skip in my step and a rhythm to my heart?

So when I sit there, nearly pulling my hair out over my geography notes, I look up at my roommate and know that the following two minutes of scream singing and dancing to Justin Bieber will be worth it, because there is music playing and we haven't a second to waste.