We're Just Dancing Animals

Author

Jamil Vanheyningen
August 20, 2023

One day, Kurt Vonnegut needed to mail a letter to a friend, so he told his wife he was stepping out to buy an envelope. Here’s his recollection of the conversation:

“Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

Kurt Vonnegut

While I enjoy having a GPS in my phone and using Amazon Prime to receive a book in a day, efficiency comes at a cost. Sometimes it pays to take the long way home or roam a bookstore for that book you didn’t know you needed.

You have to be willing to “dance”. Serendipity only happens when you give your mind the space to wander.

One of the best decisions I’ve made this year is to walk anywhere less than a mile away. These walks are where I come up with my best ideas, work through problems, and have great conversations.

While you may not have the time to walk everywhere, you can still make more time to dance. It can be as simple as eating out instead of ordering in or going for a run around the neighborhood when the weather is nice.

If you think back to your childhood or look at your own children, this will make sense. Most of the time you spend as a family will be these seemingly banal moments like buying groceries or driving to Little League practice.

What happens to those moments if you choose to rely solely on a private chef and Uber? If you don’t have time for the people you love, what exactly are you optimizing for?

Vonnegut, of course, was being a bit extreme when he said we’re just here to fart around. After all, he served in World War 2 and published more than 25 novels.

Which only proves my point: if he was able to accomplish all of that while still having time to go buy 1 envelope at a time, what’s stopping you from taking some time to slow down and waste some time?

If you make the time to dance, something funny usually happens: the world provides the proper song.