“dancing animals”

Option trader and professional shtpoaster P4 tweeted this quote I’ve been sitting on a for a month:

Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:

”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 babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story 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 it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

My wife will sympathize with Kurt’s wife. I will leave the house, forget the stamps, and come back telling her about the friend I just made who works in the produce section where we just discussed apple varietals for 30 minutes. Tangos are my favorite.

I’ve always thought this was a bit of a bug. It is quite inconvenient since I easily lose track of time. But “dancing animals” is the redemption I didn’t know I needed. It’s a redemption we all need.

It is grace.

It’s a little reminder that we are messier than our identities or affiliations or goals. Your strengths contain your weaknesses. Your beliefs are self-contradicting. You thought you were so smart 10 years ago and now cringe at what you didn’t know.

And still we will try to figure it all out. And we should.

But if we ever forget that we are animals and if we forget to dance, all that we figure out will not be for us but for our sedation.