I have tremendous respect for people who can dance. Not people who wiggle their bodies around suggestively; that doesn’t require much talent. I mean people who artfully tell a beautiful, clever, or tragic story through various forms of dance. I can’t do that. If I attempt to dance, people assume I am having a seizure and start trying to stick a pencil in my mouth.
It isn’t pretty.
As a budding teenager, Parker was part of a competitive dance troupe. He spent hours upon hours at the dance studio every week, practicing. I spent weekend after weekend in dark, musty-smelling, hotel ballrooms with flashing lights and ear-splitting music, watching little girls wearing far too much sparkly makeup, perform their art. They were young and somewhat unrefined but I enjoyed the way they were learning to express themselves through fluid…and sometimes not-so-fluid…motion.
Of course, when Parker took the stage, I really didn’t notice those sparkly girls anymore. He was a fabulous dancer and one of the few boys that age with enough confidence to withstand mean-spirited labeling in order to do what he enjoyed. Regardless, it was during those years of watching dancers that I came to realize what a beautiful, expressive, challenging art form dance is.
I started to think about expressing myself through dance.
Not that I had dreams of becoming a middle-aged dancer. I didn’t. I didn’t have aspirations of performing before an audience wearing a tutu. Okay…maybe I wanted to wear the tutu but I could do without the audience. There was just something so beautiful about the idea of using dance as self-expression.
So, I considered learning to dance. Alone. In my kitchen. Not in my underwear, a’la Tom Cruise, but maybe by trying out some lovely, evocative, lyrical moves as a way to tap into deep inner emotions. It seemed doable. But then my pinch-faced, wet-blanket, inner judge strutted in, laughing and mocking, and summarily shutting down any notions of me being anything other than ‘the girl with two left feet.’ Whatever Parker had lacked in the way of an inner-judge, I more than made up for. And after listening to her discouraging words, I didn’t attempt to dance at all.
So much for self-expression and deep inner emotions.
The truth is, that nasty inner-judge had shut down a lot of other ideas over the years. I didn’t like her very much. She was mean. And she didn’t want me to be who I was. She wanted me to be somebody else, less free-spirited, and more insecure. I didn’t want to be who she wanted me to be, and eventually, I tried to stop listening. When she started shutting down my ideas, I just turned away. When she said I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough or smart enough, I tried to ignore her. And sure enough, the less I listened, the less she spoke.
Eventually she stopped demanding unattainable perfection. She stopped telling me not to try things. She started accepting me the way I am and the way I look. In fact, the older I get the more she seems to like me. These days she has less to say about external beauty and more to say about love and grace and joy.
My inner judge and I are getting along pretty well now. We are embracing age together. I like her. She likes me. We find the same things funny. Especially when we are dancing together in the kitchen. Turns out, she’s as lousy at dancing as I am. But now, neither of us care. We glide and twirl and trip and stumble, happily and freely. Self-expression and inner emotions are the order of the day. There simply is no judgment.
I like the way things have turned out and what I’ve learned along the way. And I like being able to express myself in whatever form I choose. Life is so much richer when we just let go and live.
No need to grab your pencils. I’m just dancing.
