Whenever I watch the Kingdom Dance scene from Tangled, I find myself near tears.

It’s a fun movie. It’s full of humor and drama, and it has its fair share of sappy, heartstring-tugging moments. But for some reason, the Kingdom Dance is the one that gets me.

Tangled is Disney/Pixar’s take on the Rapunzel story. In this version, Rapunzel’s mother, the queen, becomes ill during her pregnancy, and the king saves her with a magic flower with healing powers. A wicked old woman, however, had been using the flower to keep her unnaturally young, so she kidnaps the young princess when she discovers that the flower’s healing powers have manifested in the child’s hair. Thus, Rapunzel is locked in a hidden tower, away from her royal family and her kingdom, and her hair — which loses its power when cut — grows long, as the story demands.

Rapunzel is smart and charming, but utterly inexperienced in the ways of the world. She has been taught by Mother Gothel to be afraid of what goes on outside her life of seclusion, but her curiosity grows — especially around the floating lanterns that appear in the distance every year on her birthday (lit by the citizens of the kingdom in hopes that their princess will return). She finally leaves the tower in search of answers when a thief happens upon her and she enlists him as her guide to find the source of the lanterns.

Their adventures, at last, lead them to the kingdom of her birth. At this point, Rapunzel has faced many of her long-established fears and overcome them: run-ins with ruffians and thugs, life-threatening peril, and — by far the most important and horrifying to her — standing up to her mother. She has shown herself to be what she has always been told she is not: capable of thriving in a tough world. And she’s beginning to embrace it.

Here’s the part that moves me to tears. As Rapunzel’s roguish escort shows her around the city, she trails off behind a group of musicians wandering the street. By the time he looks up, the musicians have stopped wandering because Rapunzel is dancing in the town square. Moments later, she’s grabbing people one by one, tugging them in, and they join the dance. Moments after that, the entire town square is taken up by a massive folk dance and a throng of delighted onlookers. There is then a montage of Rapunzel and her guide: she takes in the city, shows her guide a stack of books by candlelight, and scrawls a giant, gorgeous chalk mural alongside the children. She is completely in her element, effortlessly confident, free.

It slays me. But why?

There is some killer poetry going on in the narrative. The lost princess has followed the lights back to the kingdom, and she’s dancing with her subjects in the streets, but neither she nor they know it’s her. That’s pretty compelling in and of itself.

But maybe what gets me more than that is the change in Rapunzel. All her life, she has been taught to be afraid. But suddenly, she is home, and she is herself, perhaps for the first time. No fear. No pretense. Just pure, honest, innocent joy. And at the sight of it, everyone stops and stares, giving her the chance to pull others along with her joy until it spreads to all of them.

It’s beautiful.

I’m not sure if that’s a moment I desire for myself or what. My own life has been driven more by fear than joy. Maybe it’s just that I love to see that kind of beauty.

I’m reminded of when I went to prom with a friend. Nothing remarkable in that — except that my friend had a condition that had damaged her hips. She walked with a severe limp. I figured there wouldn’t be much in the way of dancing. I wasn’t prepared. When she started to move, I stopped and stared. She was graceful. Confident. She owned it. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen to this day. I’ll never forget it.

Maybe its the confidence that gets me. It takes something special to dance with joy and be unashamed, no matter what you look like when you’re doing it. I don’t have that. There’s a quote from New Girl that sums me up perfectly: “If everyone goes to the ocean and runs into the water, I’m the guy on the beach watching the wallets.”

There are a lot of amazing things I would do if I weren’t so responsible. Like what? Quit my job and become a missionary in a comic book shop. Write a series of novels about a sword-wielding clown who fights necromancers. Learn to play heavy metal on a violin. Host a podcast with my gaming group about the triumphs and tragedies of roleplaying games. Blog about what it’s like to earnestly try to follow God when you think you’re a total waste of space and someone made a mistake by letting you become a pastor.

Maybe dance.

Whatever it is, Rapunzel speaks to me. That scene in Tangled kills me. It stirs me. It makes something in me want to come out. To be free.