One of if not the most ironic feature in my life is that I limp, and yet I dance quite well. Right now in physical therapy I'm in the process of teaching one of my Sensei's assistants to dance. We're getting quite good at it together: I have to remind her every once in a while that she is my mirror, and so she should do opposite of what I do, but she's turned from a girl that doesn't seem to be able to keep up with the melody of the Beautiful Blue Danube to one who can dance it quite well.
But yes.... dancing. I cannot claim to know any of the ballroom dance steps well (I even sometimes forget the steps involved in a waltz!), but give me a melody and a rhythm, and there you go. Give me a girl to guide and I'll dance with her--and probably will dance her well. When I think of a walk as a dance, I walk well. A metronome does wonders. And the girl to guide... when I'm not looking or concentrating on my feet, but instead am looking into those beautiful eyes, my feet do well. And so do hers, if she lets my left hand guide her.
But then again, isn't all life a dance? We all know Shakespeare's quote, "All the world's a stage
/And all the men and women merely players." He's right, but that is if you look from the outside into all our small lives. As a cynic looking at the world from the outside in, I can see his view completely. But for all of us living our lives day by day, isn't every day a wonder, every object in one way or another beautiful, and every moment a dance?
We can view our lives in two different ways. They are routine and boring. I'm sitting here at a coffeeshop, one I go to almost daily, writing this. So if I look at life from this perspective, observing my pattern, I can see it as a slow monotony.
Or if we look at it as a dance, even this routine thing can be a wonder. This is a step in my waltz: I've kept a rather normal pattern for the last few years, every once in a while stumbling or making a spin. Fairly soon, though, I will have to bank in another direction: my dance may become much swifter than this place I'm waltzing. But every step, even sitting here on this desk at a coffeeshop, I am participating in my own unique dance that each one of us has. If you look at our lives from a larger, and not impersonal, view, you can see we are in this great ballroom that something--God, physics, both--created for us. We are in a dance even the NSA can't see, because the NSA itself is part of the dance. Right now my main finger is writing this as I look at the keyboard in front of me, on a finished wood desk, a wooden column beside me contrasting with a yellow wall, a guy on the desk in front of me in a light green shirt. But this one moment--this tiny little moment--makes the larger dance even more significant, because this is just one tiny instant of life's wonder.
As a cynic, I usually don't look into my life in that detail. I am horrified and amused by the world stage that daily confronts me as I am extremely politically aware; and I know I am but a speck in the dust. "All the world's a stage/And all the men and women merely players." But, even though I am but one tiny figure dancing in the great ballroom of life, I do dance, and I welcome any hand that touches mine.
