Word of the Week - 106

Word(s) of the Week: LET'S DANCE

The puzzle, or one of them: how to replicate the joy, the freedom, the sense of pure abandon one finds through dance when one's legs no longer agree to participate.

The adaptive life.  Life, indeed, no mistaking it, though of need being more inventive:when the roads are washed out, how do we reach our destination?

I have not yet thrown myself fully into all possible avenues of movement available to one of less than full mobility.  I have an excellent book on chair yoga, mostly unexplored, and the wits to know one can do a lot of shoogling about without standing, certainly without what could be identified as walking.  Yet I delay, or perhaps resist is not too strong a word.  What is it in the human psyche that allows and even goads us to hold ourselves back from that which could be so freeing?  Or should I say, in MY psyche.  I have no clear answer.

If life is about adapting, and it is, even for the most able-bodied, it is also about resisting our natural default positions.  On an intellectual level I know the more I move, the more accomplished I feel; the more I move, the more alive and youthful and hopeful I feel.  Many, many years ago I was a ballet student.  My body remembers how that felt.  I know what my legs were able to do.  What is the purpose of imagination if not to elevate us beyond actual or perceived limitations?

As this serves, I hope, as pep-inducing self-talk, it may throw needed illumination into our collective shadowed corners.  Our time here is finite, of which I am too aware on a regular basis.  That there is ample peace and delight in my days is not enough, not when I am capable of creating more through simple acts.  My history contains loss and trauma, as, I'm sure, yours does, too.  For so many of us there has already been too much juiciness lost to sorrow.  Let's swear to keep reminding each other.  It will never be too late to dance.