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?

 

“I don’t see you as a tango dancer”, pt. 3

What was tango for you when you made your first steps?

When you had your first good dance?

When you first entered the close embrace?

When you actually started hearing the music?

After your first milonga?

Even though these are some of the things we all go through and we could draw many parallels in how they felt to us, we still experience all of them in our own way. And, this is without counting the numerous other things: someone has never been to a festival while someone else visits at least one per month, there are people who have almost never danced tango to the traditional music and others who couldn’t stand anything else, you might dance with only one or two people for half a year, or perhaps with as many different people as possible…

So many differences, so many exciting things to explore, experiences to share. We are connected through tango, but you might as well say we’re connected through  English – it’s a wonderful way to communicate, but we all carry our own interpretation of it and no two people feel it in the same way.

And then, when someone asks what you do, you say you dance tango, and you might as well have said that you ride dragons in the night, because you haven’t communicated almost anything to that person if they’re themselves don’t dance it.

On the other hand, they tell you that they do capoeira. Or they sculpt. Or they write. And when you know that you can’t share such a big part of you with the person you’re talking to, you realize that it goes both ways – you also can’t sense the world behind their words.

I recently chatted online with a friend who’s doing ballet. We rarely talk these days, and before when we hung out more, I didn’t really think anything about her dancing – to me, it was just something she did.

But now, we talked about our struggles with our ego,  about getting to know our bodies, about expressing yourself through music, and, of course, about how people who don’t dance can’t understand us. So, even though we do dances which are quite different, we still had a lot to share.

That’s just one example, and I now find it fascinating to try and sense as much as possible the things other people do, to try to open up and understand their experience through all the ”languages” I speak – English, tango, activism and so on.

There’s another problem in there, though: we have a problem understanding what others do because we have a problem expressing what we ourselves do – we’re simply not taught anywhere how to do that.

So, we have to learn how to feel and think about what we do, and how we can communicate that with others.   What are the best ways to do that?

Doing what matters 3

In my second year I decided to take up Greek as a third foreign language. I did it because the professor who taught it was highly recommended to me by several people. It didn’t matter that it was Greek – I would have taken up literally any language if the professor was any good.

This was because I didn’t really feel like a student, and I really wanted to. I very quickly realized that my university studies were giving me so little, that there wasn’t one single professor that inspired me in any way and that I would get almost nothing out of them. I wanted all of these things, and so I sought them wherever I could.

In my third year, I wanted to approach one of the few interesting professors, who taught culturology, and ask her if she can be my unofficial mentor. In my final year I wanted to enrol into another faculty after I finish my studies, because I thought I would get the experience I was missing out on.

I never did any of those things, apart from a brief stint with Greek, because other things would pull my attention away. On the other hand, there were things in which I had almost unwavering motivation and sense of purpose. When it came to activism, even when I was in heavy doubts whether what I was doing had any purpose, I could never bring myself to quitting. Something in there made deep sense to me, though I couldn’t figure out what.

There were glimpses along the way, after certain projects and experiences, that there was something deeper that could be found in what I do. But, I was yet to truly find it.

Then, for the first time in my life, I fell in love with something I did. During that time I got an answer to why I wanted to study Greek or approach that professor: My being hungered for meaning, for a purpose, for a way to express itself, and up till then it wasn’t finding it in the things it did, and so I would look for something that would give me all of this.

On the one hand, much is up to chance when it comes to when will you find the thing that is your true passion. Some are lucky to stumble upon it because their parents exposed them to this sport or that instrument, and some people, and this I now find fascinating, have known since they were kids what they want to do.

But a lot of us, even when exposed to many things, simply didn’t connect with them. They were not that something through which we can express our being. They were not our element, as Ken Robinson would call it, nor were we in flow when we did it.

Yet it seems to me that finding your passion can be a lot easier than we think. There are courses and classes on so many things all around you, and if you live in a smaller place, there is still the internet, which can expose you to practically everything. So, the first step is to explore and see if there’s anything that grabs or at least catches your attention – it’s as simple as going to a different class of some activity every week, until you stumble upon something interesting enough.

The second step is to try it and not give up after the first few months. I was lucky to go crazy about tango from the first step I made and have my feelings about it only intensify over time, and I knew that my learning process will have its ups and downs, and so quitting never felt like an option. On the other hand, a lot of people seem to cool off after the first rush of enthusiasm – they hit the plateau which is normal for any activity, after the initial quick pace of learning. Yet, they don’t push through this plateau, and in the process they might quit something that could have become their true passion.

I was up until recently making the same mistake, when I least expected it: After finally falling in love with education and activism and finding my personal purpose and passion in them, I ended up distracted by other things and not focusing on the projects that mattered to me. In the process, I lost some of the flame I had for these things.

But tango also came along, and one of the many things it taught me was that your work is like a person – there is a difference with falling in love and loving it. Love takes time and effort, and as the work I put in my language workshops brought its rewards, so did being pulled away from it bring its consequences.

Today, my school of activism started, and next week so will my Japanese language workshop. Over time, through them and other similar projects, I will see if that flame I felt was something more substantial, or merely one big passing lesson. I also have to see if I can truly be a teacher in all of these things – a teacher in a sense different from what the term usually implies. More on that tomorrow.

 

Doing what matters 2

In his life-changing book Man’s search for meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote of the three things in which one can find meaning: “(1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.“ Behind the second one is love, which he sees as the ’’…the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire […] The salvation of man is through love and in love“

His philosophy of life is simple, yet truly profound and completely applicable in our everyday lives. He developed it out of his incredible life experiences, including the harrowing years of suffering in the concentration camps – his thinking has been as backed and tested by reality as possible. If there were one book I should choose to live by, this one immediately comes to mind.

And yet, as inspiring as I found it, I was yet to truly apply it to my life. One of the things in which I continuously sought purpose was the work I did. Since high-school, I felt that youth activism was something important to me, and I was involved in and/or led numerous projects, organizations, student parliaments, informal groups, protests and so on.

Though I was successful in a number of these endeavours, I failed in many more. In fact, all this time I felt like my successes were akin to weak torches on a dark road: illuminating parts of it, but not really showing where you’re going or whether the road is really the right one – or whether it’s worth being on it at all. There were always some circumstances out of my control that would cause problems, but there are always such circumstances in life and they can hardly be an excuse. The real reason why I couldn’t do something successfully long term was the following:

I never focused on the things that mattered. I couldn’t focus because I didn’t know what truly mattered to me and because I didn’t know how to say No to everything else.

Still, the good thing about ’’not saying No“ is that you’re saying Yes to a lot of new experiences, people and other things. Eventually I ended up doing an experimental English language workshop in December 2008. It was very successful and I felt like I should pursue this road further; so, three months later I did another one. It was here that something special happened:

The workshop got off to a great start and kept getting better. But while the thrill of a successful project was nothing new to me, here I was beginning to feel such intense happiness that it soon turned into exhilaration. It was almost like falling in love, but not in a person – I fell in love with what I did.

I can’t really describe it in any other way. It’s like you have a whole additional source of energy that keeps you giddily enthusiastic and efficient. Everything you do suddenly makes sense and you feel calm certainty about both the present and the future. You develop a new kind of unshakable focus, and you easily say No to things that would pull you away from what matters to you.

This was the first time I felt something like this and I thought it would last forever. I shared my joy with all who would listen, and many noted how different and more confident I seemed; all of a sudden I felt a lot wiser. After the workshop ended, I had a much deserved summer vacation (though it wasn’t really a vacation per se – I was yet to learn how to rest. Yes, I know how to make simple things very complicated) and I couldn’t wait to start new workshops and other projects.

Then came a string of circumstances, some sudden, some subtle, that slowly pulled me away from doing the workshops that mattered to me. Looking back from this perspective, I had strong reasons for the choices I decided to make, and I feel I would be too hard on myself if I thought I should have chosen otherwise. After all, one should always be allowed to make a mistake for the first time.

Besides, these mistakes would contain just the lessons I needed and in the end they taught me a lot, as they always do on the rare occasions when we actually really think about them. But first I had to lose the thing I was in love with and then fall in love in something else entirely.

 

a glimpse into tango zen 2

Some years ago I spent several months teaching English to one family of refugees from Kosovo during the weekends. I first met them while working as an interpreter, and the story of their personal plight, of their escape under gunfire and the rebuilding of their lives from scratch and in harrowing conditions, touched me deeply. I wanted to do something, so I offered to help them in the one way I could at the time – by giving free English lessons to their 6 year old son.

Soon I started giving lessons to his father as well, and it proved to be as interesting a challenge as is working with a hyperactive boy. Although he was in his late 20s/early 30s and working with computers was part of his job, he understood practically no English at all. He literally only knew a few simple words, like how to say Yes, No,  Ok and Hello.

I was thinking up ways of how to teach him a foreign language from scratch, and I decided to try with the Michel Thomas method, which had helped me get a good enough basic grasp of  Spanish a few years earlier.

It was a very slow process: Learning one small word at a time, combining words into short sentences, pointing to objects, giving them names, learning the pronunciation, correcting the mistakes, repeating, repeating, repeating…  Yet we were making progress, and at one point we decided we could make the learning more fun with a song.

”Who’s your favourite English singer or band?” I asked him. I didn’t know what to expect and I had my prejudices, as these people, wonderful as they were, were from a small village in Kosovo.

”Oh, well, I love Nick Cave” he said.

My priceless attempt at a deadpan expression lasted only a few seconds. My eyes spread in wonderment: ”Nick Cave? You listen to Nick Cave?” You really listen to Nick Cave?”

”Er, yes. I don’t really understand what he’s singing, but I like the music, and I like his voice.”

I couldn’t believe it. I loved Nick Cave.  We’ll use music we both love to help him learn English.

I picked The Weeping Song. It was slow, with fairly simple words and lots of repetition, and, of course, beautiful.

We started going through the lyrics, one word and phrase at the time. Progress was painstakingly slow, like climbing a huge mountain of meaning, and you have so little with which you can grab at it.

But progress we did make. The deeper we went into the song, the more elated both of us were feeling. As the knowledge was welling up inside him, I felt as if something was building up in me too.

We finally reached the last verse. I played the song again, a hundredth time, but now it was completely different.  Now we both knew what the words meant.

The song started.

It would take me almost an hour by bus to get to this family, and several times I would spend the journey standing,pressed tightly between tired bodies with sweaty clothes and empty expressions – the neighbourhood where the family lived had many more sad stories. In these moments (and not only here),  exposed to this grim atmosphere, I wondered whether this whole thing was worth it. I knew that they appreciated my help, but were these classes meaningful? Were they really making a difference?

The song started. Eyes focused on the lyrics we’ve written out by hand, he sang in a quiet voice, a voice with many layers whose richness started to unfold before me.  In it one could feel the effort of trying to do something which was until recently completely alien. And yet, at the same time, there was also a lightness to his tone, the ease of having rehearsed that something many times. Above it all, there was that simple joy of learning and the thrill of finally understanding what was until recently a string of meaningless sounds.

All of these layers, and much more, flowed over me and overwhelmed me. I couldn’t contain my open-mouthed smile as  I stared at him in joy with eyes wide as saucers, like those of a 6 year old boy. I had a distinct, intense feeling of being privileged to witness something truly special happening within those four walls. It was as if we were contained in our very own bubble, like two human beings in a desert under the chilly night sky, cut off from the rest of the world, happily huddled around a fire that gave warmth, life and meaning, sharing something sacred between themselves.

I remembered my doubts and questions in those bus rides. They all evaporated in that one moment. Their purpose was clear:  they had to be tough and it was necessary to struggle to overcome them, in order to selflessly give again and again, until what was given was enough to create something much greater than the individual parts.

That something was now there, and for a few moments I basked in its glow. Then it was gone, as quickly as it came. He was still singing his song, seemingly unaware of what I have just experienced. As he reached the last verse, he turned towards me with a wide grin on his face: ”Wow, that was great! I can finally understand it!”

Some weeks after that afternoon I stopped visiting this family due to various circumstances. Since then, I have never experienced anything close to that feeling.

Until a few weeks ago. That last dance, though bearing a different feeling, was, I think, a product of similar circumstances. I have given so much to tango in the past year, and I have received a lot in return. But there were many struggles to overcome, fights with my ego, fights with the egos of others, and while there was a number of victories, subconsciously I felt like I didn’t get nearly as much from them as I should have.

But that night, like that afternoon in that small room years ago, was not a freak accident of good but random circumstances. It was a product of a person’s effort  – all that giving, all that building, offered me that  glimpse into something much bigger and deeper than what one expects to find.

And this time, I feel like it can happen again; and it can be deeper and last longer than the previous one.

And yet, I can’t really aim for it. Rather, I can strive to be more present in this moment, more humble in that one, more aware of my partner in this one, and again and again and again. Always focusing on what’s right, always focusing on what matters the most.

And then, when I don’t expect it any more, it will come.