Deliberate Stupidity.

Some life advice said by Eleanor Roosevelt goes something like, "Do something that scares you every day." For the naturally cautious, it's an admirable sentiment. I've been about as diligent keeping to it as those people who write in their myspace profiles, live every day like its your last -- dance like no-one is watching. My short attention span and few opportunities to scare myself in safe, controllable nibbles tend to limit the resolution to the very occasional, metaphysical risk-taking.

If ego balances upon the pillars of one's conceits, mine is a birdhouse on a single post. I need to be smart. Smarter than you. If you're smarter, I'll assure myself I'm wiser. The average of my IQ and EQ beats yours. Equally, I can't look the fool. Dignity, or my personal version of it, is paramount.

That's why I don't dance. I fell in love with "Footloose" for about six months when 8 or 9. Not once was I inspired to dance.

My dancing isn't funny, not as a William Hung blithe dork parody, or even squirmy funny like David Brent. My dancing is painful to watch because I'm not enjoying it, and I'm painfully aware I'm painful awful. If I wanted to do something scary every day, I'd dance. It'd be as hard as it would be pointless.

I think the middle ground for a naturally safe person like myself (ie, coward) is to alter the words Mrs Roosevelt a little. For those of us without family wealth, unfamous and without a reputation to protect. "Do something stupid every day." Or even better, "Risk embarrassment every day." If the purpose of taking deliberate risk is to pick away at a general state of inhibition, then do something stupid is a good start. Then move up to something embarrassing. Then something scary.

I think the subtext of "something scary" for a fatty like me, most frightening is embarrassment. If I can take that first step and allow myself to look stupid every day, I become better liked. My constant intellectual flexing is like a guy with 20 inch biceps running around the room, challenging everybody to arm wrestle. Nobody likes that guy.

So maybe I start to enjoy being stupid. More people like me. More people like me, I feel free to do more stupid, embarrassing things. By now I'm not scared of looking stupid. Pretty soon I'm not scared of embarrassment. Maybe one day I won't be afraid to get on the dance floor, bust a move. Probably not.