Archives for July 2018

Today the world is flattening. Especially among people who are connected online, language, fashion, crafts, music, and stories are shared across the globe in record time. There is at least one challenge with flattening. That is the potential loss of variance.

Variance is the idea that even among core competencies there is room for variety. For instance language is fundamentally a form of communication, but there have arisen many forms of language-based communication around the world. In the arts – visual arts, music, film, dance, fashion – variance is what provides stylistic variety even within established forms. Variance allows for the exploration of new ideas that spring from established norms. Variance is also what allows for the birth of what end up being entirely new forms.

Tension arises when variance is disallowed. The forms we know become so rigid that no deviation from the norm can happen. Instead of exploration, a culture of oppression is established.

Understanding value sets can help here. Values are those thing that we hold as formative and unchanging. They are our guiding principles. These provide the bedrock upon which variance can occur. Without a set of agreed upon values, variance can seen as dangerous. A variance in expression may be seen as a variance of values, making the system feel unstable. However with a set of agreed upon values variance in the expression of those values may be seen as good and celebrated.

I travel a lot. Because of this fact I am often asked where my favorite place is. That’s a difficult question. If I had to choose I’d much more enjoy the company of people to the beauty of a place. However the relation of people and places is super interesting. Even though we live in a world where travel is easier than ever, and cultural exchange happens at the speed of light online, geography still plays an intimate role in our everyday lives.

Our connection to a place may limit our reach, but gives us roots. It can frame our understanding of resources, and be our point of reference when discovering other places and relating to new people.

Whether we realize it or not our relationship to the places we inhabit effects us – both positively and negatively.

Traveling around the world teaching, performing, and speaking, in different places, I am often struck by the variety of feelings I find in every place. I’m also struck by the similarity of those feelings across all the places I’ve traveled. Everywhere I’ve been there are people who are working for survival, and those trying to thrive. Some are desiring to express themselves and wanting to be acknowledged, while others, angry at oppression, are attempting to make their slice of the world a better, more livable place.

While the beauty of nature and the energy of the city both have their purposes, I guess if I had to choose, my favorite place would be in the thick of the growth. The place that has been made, and designated for, the growth of people, the revealing of truth, and the sharing of provision — that would be my favorite place.

It seems that I’ve come across two basic ways navigating life. One has to do with chasing, be it in the way of goals, values, or a way of being. The other has to do with indwelling. A discovery from within of what goals, values, or ways have been set before you. The more I talk with friends and strangers about how they see the world, the more these two dramatically different approaches seem to surface.

Being aspirational brings to mind the climbing of the mountain, the slaying of the beast, and the winning of the race. Strength and speed and intellect all play large rolls here. The challenge here is the way that what we are striving for may always seem out of reach – something that we can’t ever quite get to, but must continue to work towards.

Being inspirational brings to mind the giving of a gift, discovery, and embodiment. Contemplation, meditation, silence, and grace, are the large players here. The challenge here is the discernment of the inspiration that we are receiving – namely is it of truth or a lie.

Being aspirational without inspiration, lacks depth. Being inspirational without aspirational lacks proof.

My schedule for the past few weeks has been quite full. It’s a blessing. To work as a tap dancer/storyteller is something that not many people are allowed to do. It’s a gift. It’s also work. This is what the past few weeks have looked like:

10 days – Israel
7 days – Tokyo
7 days – Vancouver
14 days – Boise, Idaho (I made this video while here)
7 days – Rochester
7 days – Prepare for Tap Dance Freedom Intensive
6 days – Host Tap Dance Freedom Intensive
1 day – Consult and Perform on Film Shoot
5 days – prepare for trip to Barcelona
1 day – REST
14 days – Barcelona

I want to talk about that one day of rest and what it meant to me. Everything. I very rarely get a day to only rest. I still had an online coaching session with a tap dance student in Estonia, and ran some errands. But once the afternoon came about I was free to spend time with a friend. Food was involved, including gelato, and good, slow paced, conversation. We were both so tired that we found a nice shady spot in a park, laid down to cloud watch, and both unintentionally dozed off.

We woke up and both laughed at our unacknowledged need for sleep. What a beautiful thing it was to have the time and space to let the body do what it needed to recover from the stressors of life.

If there is anything I wish for others it is this: Rest.

I grieve a lot. I began attending funerals when I was 12 years old. I knew and cared about a lot of old people. Grief for the loss of a person seems normal and a shared experience. More recently I’ve encountered a different kind of grief. A grief for the loss of the past. This kind of grief is different than what happens when we lose a valued object, or someone we care about passes away. This grief is a response to the end of a particular time. That includes the cumulative sense memory of the relationships, places, and emotions associated with that particular time. That’s a lot to process.

Grief is a function of connection – more specifically the desire to maintain a connection that is not physically possible anymore. When a loss occurs, a person, place, thing, or memory of a time, can all function the same way emotionally depending on the strength of the connection. Here’s the rub I’ve recently noticed: grieving for the memory of a time can make us delay whatever is supposed to come next. We hold on to the old context for so long that new opportunities, new responsibilities, new growth doesn’t actually happen. Or happens through struggle, rather than through strength.

How do we fix this? I need to look straight in the eye of the thing I’m holding on to, and tell the truth. The past is gone. That time and place cannot be remade. I’m thankful that most of my memories are good (that’s mainly why I miss them). But now there is something new that I’m specifically designed to be doing. There is work to be done – there is Love that needs giving and receiving. And, there really isn’t a lot of time. So what am I doing holding on to the past?

A few days ago, I left the house without any of my cables. That means for the entire day I was without any charging capabilities for my phone. It just so happened that the day was full of email, text, and phone conversations. Read: battery drain. What was I going to do when my phone reached its end. The thought began to nag on me when I saw my battery percentage was down to 10%. This could be bad.

It wasn’t. I reached into my bag and found two trusted tools that didn’t rely on batteries. My Moleskine journal and Sharpie fine point pen are staples in my bag. And there they were, like old friends who wait until the time when they’re needed to show the true value of their friendship. I picked them up and began journaling. Jotting ideas down, visualizing relationships between thoughts, and doodling, have all been practices I’ve used in the past to work through questions.

Then I thought about that battery, and how I was rushing to do things on my phone, as the battery drained down to nothing. I began to think about how our behavior changes when the resources we need to function are depleted. How long can we hold on, adapt, or change the way we work, before we are forced to rest, refuel, and recover? It might be different for different people. Unlike the phone I don’t have a battery meter, but I know I have a limit. Also unlike the phone, it seems like I can work well beyond that limit. My functionality is depleted – I begin to make mistakes – and can possibly hurt myself or others on account of a simple lack of attentiveness.

Here’s my note to myself. Before we don’t have enough battery left, stop. Find a place to pause, and recharge. It’s important. For everyone.

Lines are drawn all the time. Picket lines, protest lines, neighborhood lines, party lines, team lines…they are everywhere. The lines mark a shift in something. They might mark a shift in geography, economy, ethnicity, culture, or values. With all the lines being drawn, the only act that prevents compete isolation is when someone crosses the line. They are the ones that cross the picket line, venture across the tracks, or are willing to play with the other team.

What makes someone cross a line? It could be a desire to explore what’s beyond the worlds they currently know. Or maybe they feel forced away by a change in their current group, or a change in themselves. In this case there is a lack of alignment between the individual and the members of the group that literally pushes the individual over the line.

Having operated in multiple different communities, many of which don’t naturally overlap, I’ve found myself continually crossing lines. In order to feel comfortable in a given community I often would take on characteristics of the members. I would imitate fashion, mannerisms, and language – and not just the words, but the patterns and rhythms of speech. However this became challenging and awkward as I developed a different “character” of sorts for every group of people I was around. Once I recognized I was doing this I began to work in the opposite direction. I started attempting to reconcile all these characters I had built to my personal sensibilities, the character I had individually, and most importantly, to the values I hold.

This work of reintegration, saved my sanity, but I also found it extremely difficult. The hardest part was parsing what, in the forms of expression I had adopted, was a preference and what was tied to a value. For instance, some of the language I had adopted was preferred communication for a particular group, but I could communicate the same thoughts using different words if I chose to. While other language I adopted was absolutely necessary to communicate a particular thought. The first kind of language was preferential, but not tied to the fundamental value of communication. The latter was tied to communicating well.

The other difficulty was dealing with the perception of others. Members of any group derive a sense of security through the sameness the group shares. Similar language, creative expressions, and values, provide ease in relationship. You don’t have to worry about everyone you meet. If they are a member of your group, they are assumed to subscribe to a similar value set. Here again as I was adopted into many groups, as I began to discover my own character, not just mirror those around me, differences began to arise. Sometimes this lead to tension. Sometimes relationships just drifted apart. And sometimes relationships grew stronger. Regardless there was less room for lukewarmness.

The ability to mirror is not inherently bad, however, it does a disservice to the discovery of what has been instilled in a person. Better to forge the path given to you, than to hide among the group. At least then the group will have heard the true voice you’ve been given, not just a reflection of their own.

As for crossing the lines, I’ve found that the more I discover who I’ve been made to be, and who others have been made to be, the less actual lines I see.

In 2004 I met Jim Wharton, the developer of the Wharton Health System, a series of flexibility and strength exercises designed to promote structural health. He was the first one to let me in on the fact the our physical bodies change on a daily basis and provide the tools for me to see that. If our own physical nature is continually changing, I wonder why we expect or desire consistency?

Yes, consistency takes less energy to navigate. It would be “easier” to live if nothing changed. But, then again, if nothing ever changed, then nothing would or could change. Then we would be stuck with whatever we found ourselves with. There would be no hope for anything different if the entire system we were in was static.

We don’t live in that kind of world. Instead our world seems to be changing more and more rapidly. So what can we do to find some consistency in a world where everything changes. Here are some things that have helped in my own journey:

1) Consistent practice – find some time, no matter how short, to do something consistently (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). This blog is one example of a daily practice of mine.
2) Consistent approach – develop a consistent way of approaching situations. What questions do you ask? What actions do you take? What presence to you bring? While tactics (what you actually do) might change, your approach (how you go about deciding what to do) can be consistent.
3) Consistent values – have a set of consistent values. These will provide a framework for how you see the world, and how you would like to see it. Our values provide a framework for our approaches and meaning for our practices.

Do you have things that have helped you find consistency during a time of change? Share them on Facebook or Twitter.