No One Is Watching Us Dance

What’s on my mind?

Doing the right thing.

I’m not 100% sure why this is coming up for me this morning. Maybe it’s because I’m waiting on some business news that could affect the future of one part of my life. Nothing health-related. Nothing dramatic in the way that sentence might sound. Just one of those reminders that the things we build our lives around can change, even when we thought we understood the rules.

Maybe it’s because I’m being reminded that control is usually more fragile than I want it to be.

Maybe it’s because, in my heart, doing the right thing is the only thing that really matters to me.

I can’t control what decisions get made in rooms I’m not in. I can’t control how people act. I can’t control how people receive what I say, what I do, or what I believe.

But I can control my actions.

At least I think I can.

And if I do what I believe to be the right thing, I think I’ll be okay.

At least I hope I’ll be okay.

That little bit of uncertainty feels important to leave in because I don’t want to write this like I have everything figured out. I don’t. I’m a human being, writing on a Monday morning, trying to remind myself what I believe.

This weekend I saw a video on TikTok posted by a conventional farmer. He was standing in front of a tank, getting ready for a conventional fertilizer application, and he was upset. His frustration was directed toward regenerative farmers who he feels are telling him he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or that he is ruining the land.

I watched the video a few times because I was trying to figure out if he was trying to be funny. I don’t think he was. I think he was genuinely angry.

And the strange thing is, I wanted to give him a hug.

I’m not saying that to be condescending. I felt for him. He seemed like someone who felt attacked. Someone who felt like his way of life was being judged. Someone who felt like the world was looking at him and saying, “You’re doing it wrong.”

That feeling is hard.

It’s also very human.

We don’t like to feel judged. We don’t like to feel misunderstood. We don’t like to feel like something we’ve spent years doing, learning, defending, and building our life around might someday be questioned.

Maybe that’s why we spend so much time talking about what “they” are doing.

They are attacking us.

They don’t understand.

They think they know better.

They are the problem.

I’ve been noticing this more and more. In politics. In interviews. In business. In farming. In everyday conversations. We spend a lot of time talking about what everyone else is doing wrong, and very little time talking about what we are doing, what we believe, and what we can control.

I’m guilty of this too.

That’s probably why it caught my attention.

The advice I found myself wanting to give that farmer, as if my advice would mean anything to him, was the same advice I gave my kids before we went to a wedding reception on Saturday.

There was a conversation about dancing.

More specifically, there was a conversation about how embarrassing it would be to dance.

I admitted to my kids that I don’t really dance either. Not because I don’t want to. Not because I’m above it. Mostly because I get stuck in my own head about how silly I look.

Which, when you think about it, is a little ridiculous.

I reminded them that no one else in the room is really watching them. No one else is studying their dance moves. No one else is keeping score.

Everyone else in the room is doing the exact same thing we are doing.

Thinking about themselves.

Wondering if they look silly.

Wondering if people are watching.

Wondering if they should have worn different shoes.

We all walk around making decisions based on what we think other people think about us, when most of those people are busy thinking about themselves.

Hate to break it to all of us, but most of the time, no one cares.

And I don’t mean that in a depressing way.

I mean it in a freeing way.

No one is watching us dance.

And if they are, they may not be judging us at all. They may be wishing they had the courage to get out there too.

I know that’s how I usually feel. When I see someone dancing freely, looking silly, laughing, and not worrying about how they look, I don’t judge them. I envy them a little.

It looks fun.

It looks free.

I want my kids to understand that.

I want them to do the thing.

Dance if they want to dance.

Try something new if they want to try it.

Be weird if they are weird.

Leo once heard someone call me weird. He was shocked by my response.

I said, “Thank you for noticing.”

That was it.

He looked confused at first. Then proud. And since then, he has used the line with his own friends.

That makes me happy.

Not because I’m trying to raise kids who don’t care about anyone else. I want them to care deeply. I want them to be kind, thoughtful, aware, and considerate.

But I don’t want them to shrink themselves to fit inside someone else’s imagined opinion.

I don’t want them to live their lives afraid of a room that probably isn’t even watching.

Which brings me back to the farmer.

Does anyone care how he farms?

Yes and no.

Of course people care about land, food, soil, water, and the future of farming. I care about those things. Deeply.

But is everyone watching him personally? Is everyone standing at the edge of his field judging him as he makes the decisions he believes are best for his farm, his family, and his life?

Probably not.

And even if some people are, the question still comes back to the same place.

What do you believe is the right thing to do?

That’s where this gets hard.

Because doing the right thing doesn’t mean doing the perfect thing.

It means doing the best thing you know how to do with the information you currently have.

I had a conversation with a customer last year while I was treating one of the first lawns I ever worked on through Iowa Worm Farm. They were telling me how good it made them feel to be using food waste, biology, and nutrition to improve their lawn instead of taking a more chemical-heavy approach.

I said something like, “Yes. It does feel good. And I think I’m doing good things based on what I know today. But if you step out your front door tomorrow and your lawn eats you, I’ll need to admit I was wrong and figure out a better way.”

That line usually gets a laugh.

But I mean it.

I believe in the work I’m doing. I believe in using local resources. I believe in turning waste into something useful. I believe in rebuilding soil biology. I believe healthy soil matters.

But I also believe most of what we currently know will eventually be proven incomplete.

Maybe not wrong.

But incomplete.

The hard part is that the speed at which we adopt better ideas seems directly tied to how quickly we can let go of the fact that we may have been wrong.

And that is very hard for us to do.

It’s hard to admit we defended something that maybe didn’t deserve our full defense.

It’s hard to admit that the thing we thought was “right” may only have been right based on what we knew at the time.

That’s the contradiction I keep finding in myself.

I want to live with conviction.

But I don’t want to live with certainty.

I want to do the right thing.

But I also want to stay open to the possibility that what I believe is right today may need to change tomorrow.

I want my kids to dance like no one is watching, while I still stand on the edge of the dance floor thinking about how ridiculous I might look.

I want to be open-minded, but I still like being right.

I want growth, but I don’t always enjoy the part where growth requires me to admit I was wrong.

That’s where I am this morning.

Doing the right thing.

Or at least trying to.

I’ll stay focused on what I can control, which is my own actions.

I’ll do what I currently believe is right.

I’ll try not to spend too much energy defending myself from people who may not even be watching.

I’ll try not to attack someone else just because their way of doing things makes me uncomfortable.

I’ll try to stay open to the likelihood that some of what I know is wrong, and I simply don’t know it yet.

So I’ll do what I believe to be the right thing until I know better.

Then I’ll do the better thing.

And hopefully, when that time comes, I’ll have the humility to admit I was wrong, the courage to change, and maybe even enough freedom in me to dance a little while I figure it out.