爱思英语编者按：本文作者Robert Fulghum已经写了七本畅销书，其中包括《我真正应该知道的，都已在幼儿园里学过了》（All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten），他是德克萨斯州韦科人，做了22年的Unitarian minister，讲授绘画和哲学。Fulghum现居西雅图与克里特岛。
 

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! 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 your 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 your age? Have lost your mind?" I answer, "No, and I don't intend to."

Robert Fulghum has written seven bestsellers including "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." A native of Waco, Texas, he was a Unitarian minister for 22 years and taught painting and philosophy. Fulghum lives in Seattle and Crete.

Independently produced for NPR by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick. Photo by Miro Svolik.

我相信，随着心跳、脉搏以及心中的音乐去跳舞是我的天性。所以我每天都跳。

我屋子里那个很少使用的餐厅，现在经常被用来作“舞厅”——一个铺着硬木地板、配有立体音响装置的迪厅。我的换片箱里备好了6张碟片：华尔兹、摇摆、乡村、摇滚、萨尔萨和探戈。

每天早上，在去煮咖啡的路上，我都把音乐打开，并摁下“随机”键。跳舞的时间到了！不管放的是什么曲子，我都会随着曲子独自起舞。这是一种关乎存在的增氧运动，一种动起来的沉思。

探戈最近很火爆。这是一种很复杂的比较难跳的舞，所以我一周要上三次课，花三个晚上出去跳舞，我还打算去布宜诺斯艾利斯待三个月，接受探戈文化的浸礼。更多信息请访问：http://www.engbus.cn/

第一次去上探戈舞蹈课的时候，我非常害怕，都不敢到地板上去。我还记得，有一次，在希腊克里特岛上，一场乡村婚礼之后，舞会开始了，而我却一直待在旁边不敢跳。那高超的步法让我眼花缭乱。“别做傻事了，”我想，“就看看吧。”

一位年龄比我还大的女士看出了我的想法，她从舞场中退出来，坐在我旁边说，“如果加入这场舞会，你会觉得很傻。如果你不加入，你一样会觉得很傻。既然这样，干吗不跳？”

然后，她说她要告诉我一个秘密。她低声说道：“如果你不跳，我们就会知道你是个傻瓜。可是如果你跳了，我们就会因为你的尝试而觉得你很棒。”

听了这席话，我接受了探戈的挑战。

一个朋友问我，我对探戈的嗜好是不是有点儿太狂野了。“探戈？你这个年龄？你一定是精神不正常了！”

恰恰相反：这是我深思熟虑之后的决定。我对探戈的热情掩盖了一种害怕。我害怕生命随着年龄的增长而缩短。我害怕因为不再学习、不再冒险而产生的无聊。我害怕在退出生命之局而等着末日审判的过程中，你体内发生的死亡。

我追寻那种随着新事物而产生的，尖锐而略带惊吓的喜悦——这就要求我全身心投入，对我的心智、身体和勇气同时进行挑战。

我现在的目标就是：跳完所有我能跳的舞蹈，然后，在某个甜蜜的夜晚，跳完最后一支优雅的探戈后，满意地坐下来，离开世界——因为我体内没有一支没有跳过的舞了。

所以，当人们说，“探戈？你这个年龄？精神不正常吧？”我便回答：“没有啊，我可不想不正常。”