0.6% Happiness | How I, a Huge Dance-Hater, Became a Tap Dance Instructor | #UnexpectedFuture Contest Winner

It has been seven years since I started tap dancing.
I am someone who gets bored so easily that I have never stuck with anything longer than I did in elementary school, yet I have become completely hooked. Before I knew it, I became one of the veterans at the studio I attend.

Despite that, I absolutely hated dancing when I was a child.

One of my oldest memories is crying my eyes out in the corner of the children's center because I didn't want to do the Anpanman exercises.

In junior high and high school, all girls were forced to take dance classes, and I would cry myself to sleep at night in genuine frustration, wishing I had been born a boy.

The show 'Ame Talk!' sometimes features a segment called 'Comedians Who Don't Want to Dance,' but I have never been able to laugh at it from the heart.

The comedians try their hardest, but their bodies just can't keep up with the music, resulting in strange movements that would be impossible to replicate even if you tried.

Those movements look like something not quite normal, like a broken clockwork doll or a slimy extraterrestrial.

'I must have looked just as strange and been laughed at, too.'

Because it brings back memories I want to keep sealed away, I just can't laugh at it comfortably.

That is how much I used to be bad at dancing and how much I hated it.

However.

Once I started tap dancing, I fell in love with dance.

I go to lessons at least twice a week, and whenever I have free time, I watch YouTube to practice the basics and steps of not just tap, but also hip-hop and jazz dance.

If there is a recital or an event, I will participate regardless of any other plans, and when traveling abroad, I happily join in on dance events open to anyone.

My teenage self would never believe my current passion for dance.

Let alone the fact that I am now teaching lessons as a tap dance instructor. She would definitely laugh in my face.

There is a reason why my feelings toward dance have flipped so completely. It might sound dramatic, but I was saved by tap dancing.

Seven years ago in April, I was working as a national university staff member when I transferred jobs due to my marriage, changing both my workplace and where I lived. I moved to the area where my husband's family home and workplace were located.

Three months later, I decided, 'I'm going to start something new!'

I wasn't aware of it at the time, but looking back, I might have wanted to wipe away the loneliness and anxiety of my new life with something.

I was looking for lessons on my smartphone and ended up on the website of a culture center near my workplace.

Flower arrangement, English or Spanish, watercolor painting, macrame, Tai Chi... My interests were so scattered that I couldn't decide.

However, my restless eyes...

...were firmly caught by those words and couldn't move.

And a certain sound echoed in my brain.

The click-clack sound of heels on pumps.

I loved that sound so much that when I was a child, I would often wear my grandmother's black high heels, which were way too big for me, and walk around the entryway.

This is it.
I went to a trial lesson the following week without hesitation and signed up immediately. That was in July, seven years ago.

Meanwhile, around that same time, my relationship with my boss at work began to deteriorate rapidly.

Three months since we started working together.
I had been pretending not to notice the discomfort, but I had reached my limit.

My boss started keeping me out of the team's inner circle.

Up until that point in my life, I had never experienced being ignored or treated as if I didn't exist. I had never had any major trouble in my relationships, whether with friends or colleagues.

Because of that, I had a vague confidence that I was the kind of person who could get along with anyone. But I realized that was just a huge conceit, and I had just been lucky.

Not only during work hours but even after I got home, I would think about my boss, and my emotions would be stirred up by anger, frustration, misery, and a sense of helplessness.

Since my mind wouldn't settle, I couldn't fall asleep easily, and even when I finally did, I had unpleasant dreams.

I was always haunted by the shadow of my boss.

Every morning, I hated going to work more than anything.

The thing that kept me from the brink of depression was tap dance.

Once a week, on Thursdays, for 60 minutes.

When I finished the lesson, my head and heart were clear and bright. It was as clear as a morning by a lakeside.

The moment I took off my sweat-drenched T-shirt,“Oh, I didn't think about that person even once,”I would be freshly surprised every time.

Being ignored by my boss, being treated as useless, and being made to feel like I had no value—all of that felt trivial.

After the lesson, I could think that way.

For just 60 minutes, the shadow of my boss disappeared from my world.

But unfortunately, this refreshing and reassuring feeling would be lost little by little, or all at once, every time I interacted with my boss.

So, I endured the week with the next Thursday's lesson as my hope.

It was like an oasis in the desert; I felt like I was barely surviving because I could reach this short amount of time.

My boss was transferred the following April.
It was the nine months where time passed the slowest in my life.

Even after my relationship with my boss ended, during the 60 minutes of the lesson, I could detach from everything else as if under a spell.

Titles, memories, worries, to-dos.
Who I am. What I am involved in.

There wasn't a single moment to think about such things, and I could become a person who felt like, “I don't know anything other than tapping.”

It was a very strange feeling.

Thinking that, I continued to go to lessons every week.

And last year, by chance, I found out the name for it.

I forgot what program it was, but I watched an interview video of Dr. Takeshi Yoro, famous for “The Wall of Idiocy” (Baka no Kabe).

In it, he said something like this.

Could that strange feeling have been “happiness”?

I was incredibly surprised when I realized that, and at the same time, I was incredibly convinced.

During those long nine months, was I charging up “happiness” for 60 minutes every Thursday?

60 minutes out of 10,080 minutes in a week.
In terms of percentage, that's about 0.6%.

It's only 0.6% of the time, but if that was “happy” time, I can understand the reason for that euphoria, the overly strong healing power, and the abnormally good cost-performance.

I was able to manage because I was able to fill myself with the super high-power energy called “happiness.”

What if I hadn't started tap dance?
If I hadn't had 60 minutes of happy time a week?
How would I have gotten through those nine months? I don't really want to imagine it.

I want to give my past self from seven years ago in July a huge thank you and a “good job.”

I have now left the workplace where I used to be employed and am working a parallel career.

One of my several jobs is as a tap dance instructor. I am gradually being given the opportunity to teach lessons at the studio where I used to attend as a student.

There are various reasons why I chose to work in a parallel career, but the biggest part of the reason is that I want to spend my time on tap dance as I wish.

I organize my work and life around the time I spend on tap dance.

It is not going very well in terms of time or income, but those difficulties and trial-and-error processes are by no means painful. It is a rewarding challenge supported by a positive attitude of wanting to make it happen somehow.

The 0.6% of happiness that tap dance gave me didn't just turn me into a dance lover.

It also changed the way I work and live.

And I feel that my current way of working and living is the happiest I have ever been.

That said, I am still a beginner as a tap dance instructor.

My dance technique and my teaching methods are both immature. To get better, I need constant, never-ending dedication.

I think it is an understatement to say that it is difficult for me, someone who couldn't even dance the Anpanman gymnastics well, to work in the field of art and entertainment, where a sense for dance is required.

During practice, I always stomp my feet, wondering why I can't dance as I imagine. When I stomp my feet in tap shoes, it makes a childish, spoiled, and banal sound.

I feel intimidated by the long, harsh, and uncertain road ahead.

But what I can say with pride now is,that I love tap dance, that teaching it is fun and rewarding, and that I want to get better and am convinced that I can.,

Tap dance turned me, a dance-hater, into a dance-lover and gave me the strength to overcome the most difficult period of my life.

It became the catalyst for me to start working in a way I truly desired, became the core of my life, and serves as the engine for my heart.

Tap dance has led me in a good direction. I am sure it will continue to do so.

The better I get at performing tap steps, the lighter my own life's steps will surely become.

I believe that.

An essay that is like a sequel ▼