My dancer friends and I have been enjoying the recent surge of dance shows. We're happy that folks are getting a chance to see dance up close and personal, with all of its crazy joys and broken toes. Dancers are as dedicated and powerful as any athlete.....with the addition of grace, fluidity, rhythm and something just as important but undefinable which projects that leap into artistry. Of course the pros make it seem so damn easy you can lose sight of the hard work and skill that goes into it.
But dance is also primal to life and we see it and experience it and feel it from our earliest steps. Dance has both external and internal rhythms. We dance when we're happy and dance can accompany our pain, although we don't usually dance when we're angry, it just doesn't work. We dance on land, under water and every time we take both feet off the ground, in the air.
Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't dance. It just ain't so. All bodies express themselves naturally in movement, and movement is dance.
We owe so much to our musicians who make music that insists that we dance. I have never met anyone who doesn't get turned on by some kind of music, who doesn't find themselves at least swaying and tapping once in awhile. And the dance sure does make the journey easier.
It's thrilling these days to search for dance on youtube--we can literally see any kind of dance that human beings and animals have ever done. Turns out parrots are good dancers! I found that out on youtube. Sensual tango, elegant waltz, Philippine prisoners in bright orange jump suits recreating Thriller in the prison yard, Bollywood extravaganzas, tap and hip hop.....it's incredible how many ways and how many styles of dance there are. And how many different body types look good dancing....a joyful dancer can look good no matter what. When that marriage of music and movement works, we can all tell that it's happening.
So no matter what, make sure you find a way to dance on this path you're on. It makes the journey infinitely more fun.
What is Success anyway?
I've been thinking a lot about success lately. In the last year many of us have had just about everything we know turned upside down and we are being forced to take a new look at old assumptions. For example, what is success? How we define it has a lot to do with who we are. Definitions of success are as varied as snow flakes -- no two are alike. Commenting fondly on the human condition, my spiritual teacher once said that there are 6 billion religions in the world, one for each of us on this planet, (although we tend to believe that everyone should believe the way we do!) Similarly, there are as many individual definitions of success that spur us on to take action (or not).
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
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