Doing what matters

Last autumn when I started tango, my main occupation was helping organize student protests. Instead of working on some projects that meant to me, I found reasons to fight for others.

Our education system is a mess, and higher education is no exception. Worse of all, the yearly tuition fees are ridiculously high, and due to bad reforms, a lot of good students ended up having to pay, instead of being on the state budget. So, we protested.

Since I was very involved in the organization, this meant that I would spend hours in numerous meetings arguing with young politikants, anarchists and all those in between. It needs not be pointed out that common sense was in short supply.

I would often go out of those meetings angry that we’re wasting so much time arguing with people who had plans and ideologies with no basis in reality or actual experience. I was even more angry that I couldn’t convince them that they were wrong and we were right.

But as I enter the class and the embrace, all my anger would evaporate after just two or three steps. Here it was all simple and beautiful: You knew what you were supposed to do, you fought and lost and won your little battles, you learned from your mistakes, you improved constantly and you enjoyed every moment of it. And all of this was before I have even attended my first milonga.

Though I knew I was hooked on tango from day one, it took time to slowly become aware of what this actually meant and how it was beginning to affect me. As it became easier to convince myself not to get angry in the numerous disputes at meetings, I realized that not only was I slowly adopting some of my teachers’ practical philosophy, but one of the arguments that became more and more strong in my mind was a simple ‘’Don’t worry, there’s your tango class tonight.’’

I was also beginning to feel more sorry for all the let’s-call-them problematic activists – I felt like I was now drawing strength, joy and purpose from something that they didn’t have access to. They seemed so helpless and frustrated  in their stubborn, ineffective attempts to achieve anything. As arrogant and pretentious as this thought might seem, it was what I sincerely felt.

It was also a disturbing thought, because, in a way, I realized I had a lot in common with them. All of us believed in a better tomorrow for everyone. Though I had more realistic goals, real-life experience and practical results behind me, I again began to clung to ideas of somehow educating a large number of young people to organize themselves effectively. And yet, with all the successful projects I had done with and for others, I myself still didn’t run my own successful organization. I had an excellent foundation for something I started earlier that year, but instead of continuing its development, I got involved in the protests.  So how  could I expect to teach others something I myself didn’t know? Was I trying to convince them into something that wasn’t right, but just a little bit less wrong?

The reasons for all of this ran deeper than mere organizational skill, which I had plenty of – it had to do with character. I was becoming more deeply aware of how my personal issues and flaws had influenced me when I made some important choices, including the one concerning what to dedicate my time and energy towards. Furthermore, tango was suddenly giving me something very important that I wasn’t getting anywhere else, which also meant that all this time I was missing that something. What was it?

It took time, thinking, and, above all, feeling to find out, and in the end I found some answers. More on them tomorrow.