Mbuki-mvuki: The happy dance

Is adulting overrated?

Image by Scott Webb from Pixabay

Mbuki-mvuki (Bantu)

In college, I worked at a daycare. Five days a week. With preschoolers. Have you ever worked with preschoolers? [insert corporate management joke here] They are absolutely wild. They say and do whatever they want. It was not an easy job.

There was, for example, the time I returned to work after having my wisdom teeth removed. My cheeks were still swollen and I looked like Binky Barnes. Of course, the kids thought it was hilarious. They pointed and laughed. They pinched my tender face. One of them cackled, “Miss Kristin! You look so ugly!” He wasn’t even trying to be mean — just honest. Which made it all the more brutal. 

As an adult, you could never get away with this kind of behavior, but kids are the definition of uninhibited. At the daycare, they’d break into random dance parties during storytime. They’d scream at the top of their lungs for no reason. They’d throw tantrums because a book didn’t end the way they liked. It was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had, but it was also one of the most rewarding.

Recently, someone put a word on my radar that made me think about my time at the daycare: Mbuki-mvuki. It comes from the Bantu language family — more specifically, some sources say, Swahili. And it translates to something along the lines of “spontaneously shucking your clothes in order to dance more freely.” Here’s how one source puts it:

“Mbuki-mvuki, a word in the Bantu language spoken in the Niger-Congo region of Africa, means ‘to shuck off one’s clothes in order to dance’ or ‘to shed one’s clothing spontaneously and dance naked in joy.’”

Mbuki-mvuki seems to be about embracing moments of pure joy and letting go of the inhibitions and conventions that keep you from fully experiencing that joy. Kids are experts at this. They’re frustrating and entertaining for the same reason: they seem to run on pure instinct. As adults, we’re taught to do the opposite. We’re taught to think hard about our choices. Consider the consequences. Be logical. And this is necessary because, without logic and reason, what would the state of the world be? We can’t just go around screaming at the top of our lungs in a Costco.

But maybe there’s also some wisdom in the spirit of mbuki-mvuki. Kids seem to possess an intuitive understanding of the world that the rest of us forget as we age. Fred Rogers said that play is the “work of childhood.” It’s easier for kids to have fun—it’s their job. The kids at the daycare regularly reminded me of that. I spent so much time trying to correct their behavior, but my most joyful memories were the times they corrected mine. When I joined their silly dance parties. Or screamed along with them, until it was so absurd, we just laughed. In our necessarily reasonable adult lives, maybe we could all allow ourselves a little more mbuki-mvuki.

From the archives

How Thinking Like a Little Kid Can Keep You Sharp As You Age (The Cut): At some point in our lives, we’re all pressured to give up our adolescent ways and transition into financially responsible, well-balanced, well-rounded grown-ups — a concept the internet likes to call adulting. You’re supposed to think like a grown-up, making decisions by drawing on all that you’ve learned over the years — or, at the very least, you’re supposed to want to think like a grown-up. But what if adulting is overrated? 

What’s new?

• I read Mason Currey’s great piece on Van Gogh’s advice to a young artist.

• I listened to the Radio Diaries episode: The Two Lives of Asa Carter.

• I think I have a new favorite poem.

 — Kristin