Dance Like No One Is Watching

Oh my, fasten your seatbelts.  This may get a little bumpy.  Sometimes my thoughts are so jumbled that I start one place, go another, and then hopefully finish up tying the whole thing up in a bow.  Well, that’s where I am tonight.  So, please bear with me.

My 13-year-old granddaughter is an eighth grader in junior high/middle school.  She loves ballroom dancing, and is on her school team.  When I went to her Christmas recital, I saw some girls dancing with themselves in dances where others were with couples.  It was explained to me that there are not enough boys, or boys flake out and don’t show up and girls and up dancing with themselves.  I have a lot of admiration for that girl who is determined to dance with her.  She has a partner or not.

In many ways, identify with that girl.  The first time I saw the meme:

“Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching,
and live like it’s heaven on earth.”

Someone wrote it on the back of a cocktail napkin and handed it to me at the end of one of my seminars in Boise, Idaho.  Since then Google has informed me; the words were attributed to a variety of people including Mark Twain, Satchel Paige, and William Purkey.

I have a motto on my fridge that is somewhat similar, it says: “just because I can’t sing doesn’t mean I won’t!”  It’s taken me a lot of years and a number of life lessons to get me to this place.

For years, my favorite quote was by Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.”

It was more of an indictment than a motto.  I wanted to sing, I wanted to write, and from where I was standing back then, it looked like I would die with all my music in me.

That’s why I have so much admiration for that girl dancing on the stage by herself.  It would be so much easier to just stay backstage.  That’s where I was, she could stand by me.  We could feel sorry for each other.  We could cosign each other’s BS.  Our stories would become comfortable, ingrained, and then inevitable.  Even if a partner presented himself, the comfortable darkness of backstage would have become a cocoon form which no butterfly ever emerged.

With all of that in mind, you can appreciate my dilemma when Isabella went to her dance competition this morning, and her partner didn’t show up.

I was faced with the uncomfortable dilemma of ‘do as I say, not as I do’, or grabbing this opportunity for a second chance for both of us.

There’s a powerful concept/distinction called ‘trusted, coordinated action’.  It is best demonstrated using the analogy of the flying trapeze.  Two artists stand on small platforms 25 feet above the ground and face each other.  The ideal situation is one where they have practiced their act many times with a net to catch them when they fail.  Over time, they practice, build trust and now are so confident they perform without a net.

In real life, there are various similar situations; the surgeon and the scrub nurse, police officers who are partners in the patrol car, even, some husbands and wives.

There is an elegance, a synergy and a safety in a relationship where you know someone has your back.  On the other hand, it sucks when you think you’ve got a partner and they don’t show up.

This morning, Isabella woke up at the crack of dawn to get ready for the competition.  Thinking that her partner, the boy she had been practicing with for several weeks, was doing the same, she was excited and filled with anticipation.

When circus performers decide to learn the trapeze, it is expected there will be some falls.  That’s why there’s a net!

Today, Isabella had no warning that today it was going to feel like she’d grabbed hold of her trapeze, flown out into space, and been dropped.

It’s very likely, that the boy she was supposed to dance with today has a very good reason for not showing up.  I’m in favor of cutting him some slack.

That doesn’t diminish the value of the life lesson presented.

This is just practice.  At this stage, the level of exposure to failure today, was like practicing the trapeze with a net.

I have the great gift that comes with age and experience.  I have overcome my need for the comfort of the dark backstage.

In the next few days, Bella and I will talk as though we were standing together in the wings of the theater.  Because I have been disappointed like she was this morning, I can truly step into her world and listen to her story with compassion and empathy.

I can truly be with her, listen to her story, and witness her experience, without imposing my story on her.  What worked for me, may not work for her.  The only useful part of my story is that I survived, I thrived, and so will she.