Why You absolutely should buy the red dress

Buy the dress.

As Edmund, my Great Dane, galloped into T.J. Maxx, it caught my eye. A bright red dress, the kind that clearly had enough fabric to twirl in and the Victorian style high neck that I love. I was obsessed.

Everything in me told me to walk by. It’s too bright. Where will you wear it? Do you really want your fat arms hanging out in that? And what if the waistline hits weird and accents your stomach?

Don’t get it. Stay neutral. Fade away. That’s not you.

So do you know what I did? I bought the damn dress. I bought it without trying it on or worrying about where I would wear it to. I bought it because I loved it, because like Marie Kondo would say, it instantly sparked joy.

As a chronic overthinker, I can say: sometimes we all think too much. We let rationale and analysis and society tell us what we should do instead of listening to what we want to do.

We worry about what others will think if we wear the red dress or the red lipstick or the high heels we love or the concert T-shirt or the booty shorts or the capris.

We box ourselves in as “that girl” or “that kind of girl” or “no, not that one.”

Wouldn’t life be beautiful, though, if we all started living more simply? If we started listening to our inner voice instead of the outer ones? 

Imagine if we always bought the red dress or did the thing we truly want or danced to that song in public because it moves us. Imagine if we said the words we wanted or stayed under our blanket for a day listening to the rain or stopped worrying about the to-do list and did the want-to list instead? Not all of the time. I know, I know, we have responsibilities. But sometimes, in the small moments, we can choose to do that. We can choose to live with passion instead of analysis. We can make little choices that lead to sparks of joy.

We can buy the red dress or sing the song or send the letter or whatever else catches our heart.

I hope this week, you find your own version of the red dress–and you snatch it up without a second thought.