Wear the Dress!
It was Saturday night and I was getting dressed for an evening of sharing music, art, and creative pursuits with a group of fellow performers. A friend of mine was hosting an event called Night of the Arts to showcase the many talents of her community. It was, at the time, a monthly event, and one that I looked forward to with great anticipation.
Many of the folks who frequented Night of the Arts were my close friends and many were, like me, regulars to the event. Having my fun and creative friends share this event with me made it even more special to me.
As I decided what I would sing that night, I kept in mind that it was December and that Christmas was just around the corner. Christmas music was my thing, to be sure, so choosing a song (or two!) was an act of joy for me.
Choosing my outfit, however, was more difficult.
It wasn’t that I had nothing to wear — my closets were overflowing with fancy outfits from an earlier time in my life when I got to wear them more regularly due to swanky work parties and frequent cruises. I had so many choices that choosing was sometimes difficult.
Since I’d retired from my corporate job and moved to Austin, Texas, though, I didn’t have many places to wear my fancy dresses. Night of the Arts was my chance to dig into my closet and find something fun to wear.
I didn’t like to repeat wearing the same outfit (which was also one of my “things”) and Night of the Arts was frequent enough that I’d nearly exhausted all of my less-formal dresses. I found myself digging even deeper into my closet until I found an almost-forgotten red dress, sequined, literally, from top to bottom.
The dress seemed too formal for this event and I felt that if I wore it, I’d be attracting too much attention to myself and perhaps come across as a diva.1 My friends and regular guests were used to me dressing up, but even considering this, the dress felt like a line that I shouldn’t cross.
“Wear the red dress!”
I heard the voice loudly in my head.
“Ah, but it’s not right for this occasion,” I rebutted to myself.
“Wear the dress.”
The voice was quieter this time but more insistent.
“What if you die tomorrow? Won’t you be sorry that you didn’t wear that dress?”
I could tell the voice in my head wasn’t going to give in to my excuses, so I paused and considered the question the voice was asking.
If I was dead tomorrow, I deduced, I probably wouldn’t care what I wore today, so I didn’t find that reasoning 100% compelling, but it made me pause long enough for the voice to suggest further “just put it on.”
As I shoved my now-slightly-larger figure into the dress, I remembered why I loved it so much. When I saw myself in the mirror, I couldn’t help but smile. :)
Without further argument, I proceeded to find the shoes, purse, and shoulder wrap that I’d bought specifically for this dress. As I walked out the door, I doubled down on my decision. “If this is the night my friends see this dress, I am going to make it a night to remember!”
It was indeed an evening to remember and the fun and frivolity of the night is burned into my brain. There was the usual sharing of food, drink, and dancing. Songs were sung, poems were read, artwork was displayed. I’m sure I sang something that brought me joy, but I have no memory of even singing that night.2
What I do remember about the evening is feeling incredibly grateful for my creative community and for the opportunity to share this evening with my friends.
No one acted as though they were put off by my choice of outfit. In fact, several people noted how festive it was, how ‘Tina’ it was, and someone even noted that they even found joy in seeing me wear it!
If that had been the end of the story, I suppose my experience would have been enough to justify listening to that voice in the future. As it was, though, there was a much more compelling reason reason to wear the dress, but one that I wouldn’t discover for several months.
This particular Night of the Arts event occurred in December 2019. It would be my last Night of the Arts for a couple of years.
Anyone who lived on planet Earth in 2020 probably knows why: When the Covid madness hit in March 2020, in-person events were cancelled. For me and for many others, it wasn’t a matter of simply waiting for things to start up again.
The madness that began in 2020 fundamentally broke recurring events, destroyed places we used to frequent, and even changed the people we hung out with. Our monthly joy-fest called Night of the Arts was, quite sadly, one of the casualties of Covid.
We did manage to have a few more Night of the Arts events, but things were never quite the same. People had different priorities now. There were worries over sick relatives or how to deal with respiratory illnesses in general and many folks had had their lives upended by those crazy years.
The world as we knew it had changed and even though I couldn’t have predicted it at the time, that night was my final opportunity to wear my beloved red, sequined dress for this audience.
When I look back on that night and, especially, when I see the photo of myself wearing it while I was embraced by my friends, I’m so glad that I listened to that voice and wore the dress.
No, I didn’t die the next day, but there was a death of sorts. Night of the Arts as I knew it changed because our world had so dramatically changed in the space of those few years when we couldn’t meet.
We never know when the world — or maybe just our world — will change forever. Even without a global pandemic to stoke the fires, the events that we so often take for granted are not guaranteed to be there for us one more time.
When I remind myself to “wear the dress,” it’s a reminder to not wait for another opportunity. What if this is my final opportunity? At some point, everything we do regularly will have a last time. We must find joy now, make the memories today, and capitalize on the opportunities we have in this moment.
What is your version of “wear the dress”?
What do you resist doing but would do so in a heartbeat if you knew it was your final opportunity to do so?
As for me, I plan to “wear the dress” the next time the voice tells me to. :)
I definitely was a diva at the time, but I was hoping to hide that fact at least a little! LOL ;)
Or, at least, I’d forgotten until I found the video of me singing that evening. It’s odd how with time we forget the things we thought were so important. Choosing the “right” song seemed so important at the time, but the only things I remembered years later was wearing the dress and hanging out with my friends.
As a bonus, here’s a video of my song that evening! :)