“We are between a rock and a hard place.” This expression has always intrigued me. It’s all about perspective. As I listen to all of our loud political opinions tap dancing around each other, arguments about wearing or not wearing masks, or screams about opening businesses, and all the verbal pollution and smog filling the air claiming to know the “real” truth, it all leaves me wanting to retreat into a bomb shelter and wait for the shelling to pass. I feel that humanity has become one monster with two heads. Each head is trying to bite and destroy the other without realizing that the whole thing goes down if either head is destroyed. Do we have even an inkling that we are all trying to make life better while killing each other in the process?
I performed once on a stage that was a theater in the round; actually, in was a square. Each side was identical. Throughout the choreography, every dancer had to re-orient themselves to a different “front” and focal point. It got very tricky when I had to do a series of turns changing direction after every fourth turn. I was doing this with three other people, so I had to not only find the new direction with three other people, but we had to do it with the same timing and speed while getting dizzy. Rehearsals were…interesting. We ultimately got together and decided exactly when to come down from each turn and when to go back up on our toes. If one of us got mad and tried to insist that our own way was the best and only right answer, we would never have gotten that turn section to work. It all depended on our perspective, our angle to the stage, and each other. With every measure of music, one of us would be facing a side where we couldn’t see the others, so we had to trust that everyone else was upholding their strength and clear thinking and our common desire to make it work.
I was talking with a friend about the multitude of vehement opinions regarding the Covid-19 pandemic…and the politics…and economy…and education…and how incredibly abusive people have become towards each other. She shared a profound concept. She held up a pencil and said, “If you see it from the side, it’s a horizontal stick. But if you see it with the eraser end coming at you, it looks like a circle. Both perspectives are correct, but both sides will say the other is wrong.”
Yes, there are serious issues that are confronting all of us. We are not a bunch of dancers trying to do fouettés together in changing directions. However, I fear we have become that two-headed monster trying to devour one of our heads. It doesn’t matter which head you are; we are sharing the same heart.
Please – stop biting, chomping, chewing, eating. Look together from our different perspectives. We can only travel in the same direction anyway.Dance on
Grace Notes 