Some time last week I went to a salsa class with one of my good friends. I love to dance, and I enjoy taking classes that teach me specific ways to move, but most of the time I prefer to freestyle. I love letting the music take over my body rather than being constricted to a certain set of moves or being led around by a partner. This particular night I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic, so when we arrived I had a sudden aversion to being there. I told my friend I wanted to leave but she should stay.

I fled the building and just kept walking. My friend and I had come in one car and the class was about a two hour walk from home -- I considered asking someone to pick me up, but walking felt so right. As I walked through Emeryville, Berkeley, and back to Albany, I felt amazing. I was high on the night air. Neglected thoughts surfaced to occupy the liberated time. I felt sovereign, independent, ruled from within. I don’t often act so impulsively on subconscious thought. In a way the impulse to leave the class paralleled succumbing to the beat when I dance. In this case I was letting some abstract desire from deep in my thalamus control me.

I frequently experience bouts of ecstasy based on some event or revelation, that may seem like ordinary life to others. While I was walking I remembered another special day, that I have come to consider the best day of my life:

I was in Santa Cruz with my best friend and my boyfriend-at-the-time crashing on the dorm floor of one of my old biking buddies. I woke up around 6 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I decided to get up and wander around outside, controlled by a similar impulse. I walked through the silky morning light, past a few dorms and a garden, crossed the road and entered the forest. I took a steep off trail route until I was ducking through densely packed redwoods. A movement caught my eye from through the branches. I stood watching a community of people as they emerged from a structure made of of black tarp drapings and began to make breakfast on some cooking stoves. After a moment I moved on silently and emerged into a meadow east of where I had entered the forest. I ran through the meadow, reverberating with the energy of the morning. I reached a small path and sat down on a stump so I could look out over a vast expanse of forest and valley. My mother is a Buddhist and I occasionally chant with her, but I had never chanted alone. As I sat on that stump I felt the world coming together. “Nam myoho renge kyo… Nam myo..” I was alone but I felt so connected to everything around me. As I sat there chanting for the next hour I cultivated a deep connection to myself. In the still early hours of the morning, as the silk settled out of the air, I slipped back to find my friends still sleeping.

The most obvious thing that connects these two events is the independence, either in the form of impulsivity or inner connectedness and strength. However, I think what really mattered to me, was that I was displaying some characteristic that had previously been weak or nonexistent. I have always been someone who was enthused by people’s energy, yet some of my most sentimental memories are alone. No one characteristic is fundamentally better, but the rarity of something makes it special. The first signs of a transition are the most memorable. Growth is the key. Change is the answer.