It is the birthday of my Scots-Canadian grandmother Gladys, the first person who tried teach me to dance, and it is my St Agnes’ Day tradition to write about her, the friendly if undemonstrative soul that she was.
When I was a little girl, my grandmother volunteered at a local old folks’ home, as we called it then. Her best friends, her next-door-neighbours, Scots-Canadians like herself, also volunteered there. Freddie and Margaret made music (if I remember correctly, he played the accordion and she sang), and Gladys got the residents to dance. Either she led a lady, or she followed a gentleman; these were, of course, the dances the oldies all knew: waltz and foxtrot, for example.
I was taken along once—perhaps the time I was brought to visit my Edinburgh-born great-grandmother—and that dance session sank deep into my memory. Today I know that structured social dancing is one of the best things elderly people can do to stave off both depression and dementia. Part of that is definitely the social encounter, but it’s also the moving of the mind and feet together.
If you are prone to sadness, you may profit from reading the work (or watching the YouTube videos) of a conservative (if not trad) Catholic professor at Harvard named Dr Arthur C. Brooks. He teaches courses on the science of happiness, and one of his interesting maxims is that happiness and unhappiness can co-exist. They belong to different systems in the brain, and they are both necessary for human flourishing.
Dr Brooks says that the 3 “macronutrients” of happiness–which is not just a feeling but a thing-are enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. Enjoyment is not just pleasure, but pleasure + people + memory. Satisfaction involves a struggle towards an accomplishment. Meaning is the belief that your life matters and has a direction. It can be broken down into coherence (understanding your life), purpose (knowing what really matters) and significance (knowing you matter). He also believes that happiness is fed by faith (as in religious faith), family, friends and work.
Emotions like fear, anger, disgust and sadness are what he calls “negative affect”, and he argues that they are necessary for survival. For much of history, we humans were outdoors (where, by the way, we should spend as much time as we can) where fear kept us safe from sabre-toothed tigers, disgust stopped us from eating rotten meat, anger roused us to protect ourselves and our families and sadness… Well, sadness probably led us to avoid, as much as possible, things that make us sad, like falling out with the tribe without which we could not survive.
Nowadays, we do not live on the Savannahs or even in the Great Caledonian Forest where my ancestors hunted boar and danced around campfires with antlers on their heads. This means needing to control our negative affect—especially if we are naturally choleric or melancholic—and bumping up our positive affect, too, to make up for the fact we no longer spend so much time with family and friends or doing the kind of work we used to do, especially outdoors.
To control negative affect, Dr Brooks recommends getting up early, getting outside for a walk, doing aerobic activity and weight-lifting, going to Mass or saying the Rosary (or, for non-Catholics, some other religious or philosophical practice), eating right and then getting to work. To bump up happiness, he recommends cultivating relationships with your family and friends, improving your faith (or philosophical) life, and working.
And this is where I think social dancing has a role: structured group dancing, especially with partners and complicated figures, is an activity that you can (and should) do with family and friends, particularly from your faith community. It strengthens relationships and community. It’s enjoyable in that moving to music is pleasant, but you are also with people and creating memories. It is satisfying in that you have a not-too-onerous struggle in leading or following your partner to the end of the dance. It’s even meaningful in that you are part of a great dancing tradition and, indeed, part of a great chain of Christians dancing towards God.
Speaking of legacy, I was charmed to read this morning the reflections of the new President of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Ontario, a former colleague of mine. Dr Patrick Craine attended OLSWC’s “Netherfield Ball” on Saturday evening and was delighted by the students’ dance tradition, handed on from year to year without professional instruction:
Students arrived in period dress and gathered with faculty and staff for a shared feast, followed by an evening of dancing. The room came alive with ordered steps and lively movement, from the foxtrot to swing dancing and other steps that students have learned and passed on to one another over the years.
What strikes me most at college events like this is how natural it all feels. These dances are not imposed or choreographed for an occasion. They aren’t taught by our professors, or form part of any program at all. They are learned, practiced, and shared organically within the student body, simply as part of life together – simple expressions of shared joy in one another’s company.
Events like this are integral to the culture of our college. They reflect a commitment to wholesome customs, to beauty, and to community. Dancing here is not a performance but a shared language, one that brings generations together and gives form to joy.
As I settle into my role at the college, I continue to be amazed by this culture and the traditions our students sustain so naturally. [My wife] and I don’t know how to dance at all, but evenings like this make us feel that we had better learn! It seems to be part of fitting into a community that values celebration and friendship.
Catholicism values celebration and friendship. Joy in this life does not endanger joy in the next. In fact, it’s a foretaste, just as a happy marriage on earth is both a metaphor and a foretaste of the marriage of the soul with Our Lord in heaven.
In your charity, please pray for the souls of my grandmother Gladys and her husband George.
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