UNDIGNIFYING BUT HEALTHY
Exploring the Healthy Habit of Dancing
by
Frank Tietie
I’ll rather be a name dropper than be the one who pulls down names. According to the Oxford Web Dictionary, name-dropping is the practice of casually mentioning the names of famous people one knows or claims to know in order to impress others. So how is that a bad thing? Isn’t that better than criticizing the rich and famous for being successful in business, politics and the professions based on assumptions?
So why shouldn’t I make a billboard advertisement showcasing when I had a handshake with a sitting American President or, as a matter of factly, claim that Ebuka Uchendu was my classmate at the Nigerian Law School because he is now the king of silver screen talk shows and Bill Gates visited him recently? Meanwhile, my classmates during my primary, secondary and university times often call me after my usual news analysis on Arise News, to say that they just proudly told their children that they were once my classmates. Call it namedropping, but that’s better than reminding their children that I once stole another student’s well-updated notebook a few days before the promotion examination so that I could pass. What a shame that was! Or that I was once a Christian fanatic who once preferred being a crude evangelist to being a law student. Imagine such misguidance!
Anyhow, namedropping is better than cynicism and criticism, which often cause one to be a bitter person. It is better to associate yourself with the success of successful people than disregard them. That way, you become more at peace, being without envy and are gravitated to becoming a distinguished personality of your own that people would also want to namedrop. Rather than look at namedropping as a sign of an inferiority complex, consider it as a way of persons trying to make you know who and what’s important to them, hoping you can share a part of their worldview in their pursuits of business, professional or social success and enjoyment of life in general. Therefore do no longer consider namedropping as undignifying. It is simply a way of communicating essence.
So if there are other things you consider undignifying as a successful or upwardly mobile person, let not dancing be one of them because it can practically make you live a long, happy and healthy life. That is what regular exercise does for the human body. It has been medically proven that an obese person who does regular exercise has a far greater chance of living much longer than a person of average weight or proper body mass index (BMI) who doesn’t do regular exercise.
But to do regular exercise is challenging, at least at the starting stage. In my own case, possessing a retinue of exercise machines, including a treadmill, static bike, springboard, rollers, electric tummy belt, dumbbells, weight bag straps and more, yet I could hardly sustain a 20-minute activity to generate enough heat and sweat that would amount to anything healthy for the body. Exercise is very dull compared to reading a book. That was before I adopted dancing. Thanks to the motivation I got from the YouTube channel of a friend, Lillian Aikpitanyi, a chartered accountant, university lecturer and doctoral candidate. She has become prettier and healthier since she began her exercise thrill, and now she is a health and lifestyle consultant. Check out her link: https://youtu.be/20IxwqEbY7U and be sure to encourage her by clicking the subscribe button.
So one would have thought of Lillian starting a fitness YouTube Channel on which she dances to techno music as undignifying for a chartered accountant and a university lecturer. The same way Nigerian lawyers cringed in their conservative prisms (not prisons) when they saw the video of the Law Firm of Mtetwa and Nyambirai joining the Jerusalema Dance Challenge and set YouTube on fire:
https://youtu.be/dDc4wANp80o .
The sober common law legal tradition of English origin considers it to be very undignified for a lawyer to be dancing in public with reckless abandon, yet Olumide Akpata, a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association care less and holds a record as the best dancing NBA President ever when he proved he could beat MC Hammer in a dance challenge but he has not been spared the chastisement of the so-called elders of the profession. Trust them! But the highly successful Zimbabwean law Firm, which took to dancing publicly in a viral video, became the envy of many other law firms worldwide who once thought dancing for lawyers was undignifying.
Beyond the showmanship of dancing in public, taking time in private to rigorously dance to a favourite fast pace music is a perfect and effective way to exercise, especially for persons like me who have passed half-time. I specifically recommend dancing to the rhythm of the following tracks:
1. Strafe-Set it Off
The Jacksons- Can You Feel It
2. Culture Club – Karma Chameleon
3. Dirtsman- Hot Dis Year
4. Promise Circle – Be Mine Tonight
5. Avicii – Without You “Audio” ft. Sandro
6. David Guetta – Titanium ft. Sia
Set if Off for me is particularly, the best of all for the dancing exercise challenge. The track lasts for over 9 minutes, and with a solid resolve to dance its rhythm from its beginning to the end surely satisfies a daily dose of bodily exercise.
Music is enjoyable, and exercise is a necessity. Dancing combines both. Therefore, add dancing to the list of healthy ways of living.
While I have always included dancing as part of the Human Rights Fiesta when I was organizing it in the past, it was simply for show. In the near future, I will organize dance programmes for the personal value of groups of people. Not for show but to promote health and the social needs of expression and connection. There is a need to stay healthy, live long and be happy, especially when your work here in this dimension is yet unfinished.
Frank Tietie,
Lawyer and Media Personality writes from Abuja, being part of his coming book, Random Thoughts – Frank Expressions on Life @ 50
