dance

"A warrior who cannot

dance? Clumsy in both war and peace he is."

―Yoda

I love this quote. I love that the rigidity (rigidness?) we think has to come with efficiency or productivity or whatever is called into question by it.

You have to be able to dance in life. You have to be able to feel life's flow and dance with it, to bend without breaking, to sway to the music of life. Since this sounds a little vague, allow me to give an example.

Let's say you had some kind of rigid expectations about life and love and relationships and how things should work, but you didn't take into account that each person moves at their own pace and in their own way, to their own music (as it were). You would not only set yourself up for disappointment in having your expectations crushed, but you would undoubtedly earn a bit of a reputation amongst any friends as someone who, well, they don't really want to be with.

Contrast that with taking each day one at a time, embracing the moments as they happen, and learning to live THEN, in the present, instead of in the future (where all our expectations ultimately lie). You can't put too much stock in one person - one person cannot be held responsible for making you happy. The ability to create and experience joy in the moment seems a bit of a lost art - at least, it was lost on me for a bit. And so I stumbled, clumsily, through life, having much the effect there that I had at other dances - I made some people trip, caused others to want to stop dancing, and ultimately gave up.

Sure, learnign to dance isn't easy, and you make mistakes at times. But much like my spelling mistake in the previous sentence, they are rarely catastrophic, provided you are intent on learning, on dancing, on respecting other dancers' freedom to move to the music at their own speed . . .

And when you find yourself dancing with someone else, well, THEN you dance together and match your steps. But trying to dance with someone without them knowing? Creepy.