Teaching the teacher

As our teachers are gone for the weekend, tonight we held the first two of four beginners’ classes. I have a lot of impressions, but this was the strongest one:

When the class was over, one of the students, with whom I barely managed to exchange a word or two outside of class so far, approached me and told me:

“You were really good, but you should be yourself a bit more, instead of channeling your teacher through you.”

He not only said it in such a nice, calm and encouraging way, but he put a lot of meaning into it. It struck me on several levels and it made me think more deeply about all the things I write about here every day – and it pointed out which of these lessons I wasn’t applying the way I should have.

more on that tomorrow.

to be continued

 

 

facing a crucible, pt. 2 – the challenge of the unknown

So, why did I think I could write my publication in a week?

I know that I usually misjudge how much it will take me to do something, but in this case I was way, way off.  I said that it’s because I didn’t know what it means to write a publication, and I couldn’t find out how to do it even if I wanted to.

But is that really true?  Couldn’t I have looked around the internet a bit first?  Learned from the experience of those who have spent years mastering the writing process?  Or perhaps I could have talked in person with someone who has already written a book?

There were many options which I didn’t really consider. Instead, I pretty much plunged into it.  What’s more, during the many times when I got frustrated with how difficult and slow the writing process was, I would usually try to solve the problem by merely making another sketchy outline of what I had to write about, instead of dealing with the writing process itself.

So, while I consider myself very resourceful and able to adapt to various circumstances, ever so often I catch myself facing some challenge or new situation on a sort of dumb autopilot. And, as I said, in a project big as this one, I not only approached it without a plan but even when the warning signs were flashing, I did nothing about it – or, should I say, I didn’t know what to do about it.

I guess no one ever taught us how to learn how to do things well no matter what they are, and even when I got a very good lesson on my own, I guess I still need to  learn how to apply it consistently.

So, basically, it’s a meta-lesson of sorts: learning how to consistently apply lessons about learning. It sounds a bit scary, but I think I have pretty much everything I need for this task – I “just” have to apply it.

to be continued

Facing a crucible, pt. 1 – the challenges

Yesterday I sent in the final version of the guide for high-school activism through student parliaments. In the two months it took me to write it, I faced many challenges:

First, my expectations were, as usual, way off. I honestly thought I’d be able to write it in a week. I don’t know how I came up with such a silly idea.

Well, I do. I literally had no idea what it means to write what could pretty much be called a short book – the 60 pages in  Word will become anywhere between 120-150 once the editing is done (it will be in A5 format). So, I embarked on something for which I didn’t receive any sort of training, and, honestly, where could I look for it? Internet tips on writing books?

For this reason, the writing process itself was very erratic. One day I would write for hours, inspiration pouring out of me, and then for the next few days I couldn’t put in more than an hour of sloppy writing a day. Every time you change one paragraph, or just one sentence, you have to go through the whole chapter to see if it fits. It’s like you’re at the same time both making and solving a puzzle in which you’re constantly polishing all the pieces, but as soon as you change one, it doesn’t fit as well anymore and you have to change all the others.

Because of the looming deadlines and a sense of haphazard  progress, something which I wanted to write for a long time started to feel like a burden. At one point I realized that I told someone “I’ll have more time as soon as I finish that goddamn publication”.

And when I finally finished it, it didn’t feel like success or… anything, for that matter.

So, I faced a lot of challenges writing it, and the lessons from tango helped me a lot in facing them the right way. More on that tomorrow.

to be continued

unpredictable change – learning vals

While I started dancing milonga pretty much by accident, with vals it was a different story. I wasn’t afraid of dancing it – I just didn’t get it. There would be a few songs that I liked, but in general they all sounded similar and, well, uninspiring. I couldn’t connect to them in any way - until about two months ago, when suddenly I  could.

They just started to make sense. I could feel the emotion in them, the way they build their energy like a grand spiral, a swooping continuous pulsation, not stopping until the last beat. I loved it.

What I find amazing is how sudden and unforeseeable this change was. Like learning a language, one day a certain sentence is meaningless and the next it just makes sense. Our problem, I would say, is that I think we often forget this – just because a change isn’t clearly visible as some continuous, gradual improvement, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening.

What we should remember, then, is that if we are putting in the hours, doing the right things and being present while we do so, change will happen. We might not be able to predict when, mostly we have no idea what our work will bring in the future and sometimes we’re also not sure if what we’re doing will produce results at all. But that’s the beauty of it, wouldn’t you say?

 

Choosing your attitude, part 2

The thing that took the most of my time in the past two months was another writing project – a guide for high school students  on how to run their student parliaments successfully.

It was a helluva challenge from which I learned a ton, and I’ll write more about it when I finish it – which was sort of supposed to happen today, because I’m sending  in the preliminary version tomorrow for review and I have to finish it in the next few days. However, what happened today in the meantime was pretty much everything: a stomachache that knocked me out for half a day, my computer died and I barely managed to extract my documents, the other computer I’m writing this post from is about to fail, In the next 48 hours I’ll have to learn Indesign because my designer is leaving the country and I’ll have to do it all at a friend’s office on a spare computer.

As one bad thing after another started coming up, I began to get frustrated. Then, before the emotion really enveloped me, I recalled one of my lessons:

These are the circumstances before you. They might be very tough and completely unfair.  Yet, some of them you simply cannot change right now. But, you can accept them and choose your attitude towards them.  Then you will be able to give your very best and get the most out of them.

This time, in a situation in which I usually get anxious, it worked. I’m calm. I can’t wait to learn the new program. I’ll work as fast as I can, and if I break the deadline, well, it couldn’t be helped.

At least that’s how I feel now. Tomorrow we’ll see if it was only a momentary rush.

Overcoming your fears – learning the milonga

I remember the time when I couldn’t dance to either milonga or vals. Every time a tanda would come up with one of these two, I would sit it out, because I didn’t know what to do – I liked the milongas but they seemed way too fast for me, and vals I simply didn’t get.

The silly part is that I decided all of this without having actually tried dancing to them, and I realized this when I noticed some of our beginners dancing to them, even though they’ve been dancing for only 2 or 3 months.

I know how they looked at us when we, the “advanced” dancers, danced, with the same sparkle in their eyes which I remembered when I was starting out “They are amazing. When will I be able to do all of that?”. And yet, I don’t know if they were aware that they were currently a lot more courageous than me.

That’s because of the main reason I wasn’t dancing during those tandas: I was becoming fairly confident with my tango, and suddenly, in front of everyone, I had to become a beginner all over again. I felt like I had a lot more to lose than our beginners. My ego wouldn’t allow it.

Then one night, I was dancing with Milena to a good, strong tanda, and when it was over we were really energized and looking forward to the next one. An unusual song started, familiar in the tip-on-your-tounge sort of way, but one I haven’t heard often enough. There was something strange about it, but I had no idea what it was, so we started dancing to it.

Halfway through realization dawned, but I think I waited until the end when I said “Wait, wasn’t this a slow milonga? A milonga?”. “Yes, and we danced to it! You danced to it!”, she said excitedly. Another one was coming up, a faster one, and we decided to carry on. By the end of the tanda we were having so much fun, and suddenly milonga was no more a bogeyman for me.

On the one hand, you could say I learned how to dance milonga by accident. But in fact, there were a lot of circumstances which were just right: a strong first tanda to get the energy going, my partner with whom I’m the most confident and a slow milonga to ease you into the faster ones ahead.

Also, I was good enough to be able to pull it off, without really knowing it. What I did notice at the time was that my dance was getting simpler, with short, rhythmic steps, lots of changing of weight and so on – like it was adjusting itself for a milonga. So, when I danced it for the first time, it all simply clicked.

I had everything going for me, but all that time I lacked the courage to make that one small first step. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I had any real idea of when I would start dancing the milonga – I guess I wanted to practice it in class first, until I felt I was good enough to dance it at a milonga.

But good enough for what, for whom? For my expectations of myself? For the expectations I though other people had of me and my dance? Instead of being proud of having the courage to try something, even if it means first fumbling a bit, I was being held by such misplaced thoughts and fears.

At the time I believed that in what we fear lies the path of our growth, but now I had a better idea of how to face it in the future. Sometimes the only thing you should fear is fear itself. Always try to see what the source of your fear is, and whether it is really that big of a deal, whether it’s worth holding you back. In the end, I think most fears aren’t.

 

 

Facing the blank page

There is an interesting discrepancy I’ve been starting to notice concerning my writing – more specifically, what I think it takes to write something of value for this blog. I  have a lot of those moments in front of the blank screen when I’m not sure if I could write anything worthwhile if I also don’t have some chain of thought or spark of inspiration running across my mind right now. And yet, I know that writing is a process and something you must actively work on, and thus you can’t expect inspiration to come every day.

Then I remembered an amazing book about art and creativity I read some time ago – Old Masters and Young Geniuses. In essence, it talks and gives plenty of evidence  of two types of creativity – one in which an artist creates something extraordinary and pushes the boundaries of his art even though he’s quite young (think Picasso),  and the other in which the artist takes years and decades of effort to perfect his art (think Rembrandt). The former is dubbed the conceptual innovator and the latter is the experimental innovator.

I think that in general we’re more aware or accepting of the conceptual approach – having some idea in mind, a sort of latent energy, that expresses itself in a burst of artistic creation. And yet, even if we would want to create art like that, we still need to have some level of skill to be able to express whatever it is we’re feeling. This skill must be built through continuous work that produces some sort of value. We’re rarely aware of how much work is needed for this, nor do we appreciate the process of learning itself. “I have this idea for a song, if only I could learn how to play the guitar”.

And yet, as we progress, through our continuous work we are creating something of value that keeps growing. The more I dance tango, the more I enjoy it and the more I want to dance it. There are moments when I feel a burst of some sort of tango inspiration, but apart from those moments there are always the continuous good feelings which come from my daily dedication to tango.

However,  I noticed that while my feelings  towards this blog in general are very positive, I injected a bit too much of the wrong expectations – waiting for the moment during the day when I’ll be inspired to write, trying to form a chain of thought that will produce a post with value…  Like if I thought I should have a particularly good dance every day, something which I’ve learned  you can’t really expect.

So, I can’t push myself far beyond what I can do; but I should always write as well as I can at the moment. I have one perhaps unusual idea of how to test this: I’ll try the experimental approach – sit in front of the blank screen, and write continuously and without distraction for an hour or so, without expectations of what the end final result will be like.  Sort of like something I managed to do a few days ago, but which I’ll have to practice applying consistently. Let’s see how it goes.
to be continued

 

Lessons from tango – the next big step

Some months ago I wrote on my other blog about how I applied what I’ve learned from tango to another aspect of my life. It was a big challenge for me and I felt proud for overcoming it with a lot of determination and effort. It was also the first time I systematized and integrated my tango experience on such a scale.

I am reposting it here now because I feel that it’s time for another, much bigger integration, so to speak. A lot of challenges have come up and a lot more will come along soon, and I feel like I’m not facing them as well as I could. I can see a hazy outline of what I should do, but I won’t be certain until I really sit down and think and feel it through. Until then, enjoy the post that also gave me the name of this blog.

Lessons from tango – how to do things well

During a very turbulent time for me when student protests, moving and other things came my way, I slowly became aware that tango has not only been having a more and more profound impact on my life in many ways, but it had become the one good constant; an example and comparison, in fact, of how I could do everything else. This awareness grew to the point of happy bemusement (sometimes bordering on irritability): while all my conscious attempts to improve various aspects of myself and my life have been processes with their highs and (oh so many) lows, tango started great and, without any seeming intervention on my part, only became better. I thought about why this was so, and one of the things I came up with is a concrete list of the circumstances that I had in tango which made it all possible:

First of all, from the first steps I made, tango has been something I love doing, pretty much to the point of obsession. No matter which form I experienced tango in, I enjoyed it immensely: practicing in the great classes at our school, shifting my weight around while waiting for the bus, hopping down the street to the rhythm in my head, listening to the music when my feet hurt so much I couldn’t make another step… it got to the point where I would literally, the moment I wake up, stretch my arms out and suddenly become aware that, as the music started involuntarily between my ears, I had put them in the embrace position. And, of course, all of this led to the most important and wonderful thing – that embrace with another person on the dance floor, where we express ourselves through the music, together with the other dancers, with no two dances ever the same… I might not be able to express in words why I love it, but I intimately and intuitively understand why, and that is all that matters.

So, tango has slowly invaded most of my waking hours – and it wouldn’t be so without the teachers in my school. They are wonderful people, and from the first moment I could see that they had a superb teaching/dancing system and philosophy. Their enthusiasm for dancing and sharing tango is visible from a mile off and, as can be seen, dangerously contagious.

Having this in mind, while dancing at the milonga (the place/social event where tango is danced) is what, in one way, tango is all about, as I said I also enjoy the many hours of practice in classes – and when I say many hours, I do mean it. I get a lot of comments on how well I dance after only this many months, but what needs to be taken in account is that I practice at least three to four times as much as an average dancer per week. Our classes are 90 minutes long and I attend at least 4 weekly, sometimes racking up to 13-14 hours per week, compared to some 2-3 hours for most people. I wouldn’t be able to attend so many classes if our teachers didn’t offer such an opportunity to all of those who want to practice more.

I also wouldn’t be able to practice so much, no matter how much I loved tango or how good our teachers’ system is, if I myself didn’t have the right approach to practice, and here’s one place where I can give myself credit. When I was starting tango I wanted to see if I could apply all of my thoughts on education and how different things are learnt in a specific, most appropriate way. So, from the start I consciously tried to model my approach to learning tango: First of all, I would trust my teachers and follow their instructions, both in the general approach, the philosophy of tango if you will, and in a particular exercise, as much as I could. I would always try to be present in the moment, to concentrate on thinking through my body, so to speak, on trying to feel every exercise through whatever I felt (or was told was) appropriate, juggling between my feet, my legs, my chest, my back, my head, my mind… This might seem obvious to some, but I think a lot of people often (me included, though less and less because I’m constantly working on it) easily slip into an unconscious sort of mere physical repetition of some exercise, without either feeling what is going on or reflecting on why it is important, how it fits into the greater picture. At the times when I wouldn’t feel like doing anything, even going to tango classes, I would still force myself to go and I would always learn something new and be happy that I didn’t stay slouching at home.

I could see the results of all of this constantly – in the quality of my own dance and in the dancing of others. So, there was practically instant feedback to whatever it was I would do/think/practice. This doesn’t mean that I am always evaluating myself, because I’m not, but when I do, the results are not hidden, vague and so on – and I do it either through my personal reflection or through discussions with my fellow tango addicts.

And yes, apart from my personal process, there’s also the tribe element, so to speak: all of us tango dancers who understand each other and spend a lot of time dancing and talking about all things tango, supporting and strengthening each other’s addiction – sort of the opposite of an AA meeting. I became good friends with several people from my school, and even though we have a lot of subjects to talk about, sooner or later we either start comparing them to tango or switch back to talking solely about tango.

So, to summarize:

I love dancing tango and I know why I love doing it. I also enjoy the many hours of purposeful practice, under an excellent system by great teachers who support our passion by inspiring us, encouraging us and giving us an opportunity to practice even more. I can always see the results of my practice. I have a big group of people around me who share and strengthen my passion for tango, and with whom I explore the greatness of tango and how it relates to the rest of the world.

The one place where I very consciously tried applying this was in my exam preparation. My department and the exams it comes up with are a mess inmany ways, so I knew full well that I could only apply a few elements out of the perfect tango equation:

First I found a good teacher of Japanese who has been through my department’s ridiculous exam system, and thus she understood it well and devised an appropriate method of preparation. With her I clearly defined the exercises I needed to do, I accepted their purpose (helps in passing the exam, not in learning real-life Japanese) and I did them as often and as consciously as I could. I talked with other people who were preparing (or have already been through) the exam to get encouragement, important tips, fresh ideas etc. Even though the exercises I did weren’t anywhere near interesting, I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment when I completed them, as well as the visible progress after several days of practise, which in turn increased my overall motivation.

I not only passed the exam on my first try (a lot of people spend a year or two and half a dozen attempts, which was also my case with another exam before this one), but I’m confident I’ll easily pass the next and final one in line, even though it’s as frustratingly ridiculously pointless as the previous ones.

Another important lesson here is that, of course, it’s not that I found the tango checklist somewhere on the internet and applied it on Section C2 of my life – I defined it on my own based on my intense personal experience with tango and with all the other things I did in my life. Only then, with a clear feeling in my head of what it feels like to be privileged to stumble into doing something you love in the best possible circumstances, could I apply it to other things. Even if, for whatever reason, the circumstances worsen or I even end up unable to dance tango, I can still use this list to guide me in other aspects of my life – and hopefully you can use it too.

So, think of all the things you’re doing right now, and see if it has these elements:

- Do you love doing it? Why? Why not?

- Do you have the right environment? Does it motivate you to work?

- Do you have a good system and/or a teacher to guide you?

- Are there clearly defined goals and benchmarks for the daily work?

- Are you putting in enough hours?

- Can you easily see and enjoy the results of your effort?

- Do you have people around you who are doing the same thing with whom you can share ideas and find motivation and support?

There’s more, of course, but basically it all boils down to these questions.

So, ask them, and keep asking them.  And do tell me what you come up with.

Two years of Tango natural

It’s less than one hour before the the celebration  of the 2nd birthday of our tango school, Tango Natural. One year ago, a month after I started dancing, we celebrated our first birthday, in the place where we had our classes. All I thought about at the time was that I’m happy to be here, though I wasn’t still sure what “here” really was.

Now, one year later, that celebration feels like it happened in a different world. Since then we have organized our own festival, we went together en masse to festivals in Porec and Budapest, some of us have become apprentices, as a team we have started several projects… and now we are celebrating the school’s birthday at our milonga, which started two weeks ago.

So, a lot of tango has been happening in the past year,  and in that period we have all spent so much time together and got to know each other so well, I can’t really find a comparison with anything else I’ve done.

I could spend a lot of time writing about it, and at some point I will, but now it’s time to celebrate. So, I’ll finish with this thought: Right now I think I have an even less clear idea of what “here” really is, but I’m also incredibly more happy. A lot more tango and other things will be happening, but the most important is the one happening now.

being present, pt 3 – writing, fun and chores

Sometimes it’s so difficult to write.

As you stare at the blank page, you wonder how much of it you have to fill out to make it worthy of posting.

Then you remember that it’s not about the quantity, but about quality. But still, how do you know you’ll get there?

I want to get away from the blank page. I find excuses. I wait for inspiration. I take a walk. I alt-tab. All in all, even though I could write now, I want to do it in some “later now” that will feel right.

Maybe sometimes now really isn’t the right moment. Sometimes, however, I should definitely first log out of Facebook before making that decision.

But now I’m already halfway there. To get here, I needed to start writing, and to do that, I first had to tell myself that now there is no reason not to write. So I closed my web browser and I postponed all I have to do until I finish writing for today – it’s one of those slow days when I know I can afford it and no excuse is good enough. Now there’s nothing left to do but write this post.

For some reason, in one frame of mind we are completely averse to mistakes and effort and we want to avoid them as much as possible. But when we’re focusing on the now, they lose practically all negative connotations. Once the distractions are gone, it all becomes so simple. Every time I would hit a bump and not know what to write next, I would simply think and wait, instead of looking for a distraction to amuse my struggling brain.

When you think about it, it’s as if in everything we do we divide it into the fun part – the reason we do it – and the part that feels like a chore we have to wade through in order to get to the fun part. When I write, I love the writing process itself and how it might influence someone who reads it, but I often struggle with the editing part: I have to read my post again and again, to see if it makes sense, to fix the typos and to add all the links. Usually I see this as something I have to struggle with.

But now that isn’t a chore. Every time I read the post again, I observe if it can be made to carry my thoughts even better. Every time I think about links, I can wonder if that one is the best possible choice. And even if it’s just something that has to be done, than I do it, and I don’t judge it, because I know that it’s an integral part of something important – it has to be done, and that’s that.

In tango, some see dancing as the fun part and the classes (or, more precisely, certain parts of them) as the chore. But it’s all fun, with the right perspective.

to be continued