Knowing what you want … or not?
Knowing what you want isn’t something that many figure out immediately. Be it career, love or life in general, we never really know where we end up. A lot of times we are faced with inhibitors, stupefying our efforts to make our lives better. Like the time you pursued that someone of your supposed dreams or another time when you were so sure that a certain career was meant to be or even when everything in life seemed to fall in place.
Life just throws us a boomerang and hits us on the head. The point of it all is that we never know what will be … no matter how much we plan for it.
I started Salsa dancing again last May 2006, on a whim that I’d finally master the dance. At no time in this quest of mine, did I ever fathom that any good would come from it. You see I actually started salsa 2-3 years ago … moving from one dance studio to another trying with little success to get some semblance of rhythm.
So here I was trying another seemingly futile attempt, to right my two left feet. The first few classes was not very pretty, the images of my ineptitude came back to haunt. I couldn’t get it right even after a progressing a few modules. Pathetic, I felt. I thought of quitting so many times. I just wanted to let everything go. It seemed so easy to sink back into my comfort zone of aimless debauchery.
But I stayed. Not of the dance but of the people I met. They made me stay. They made me appreciate community.
Honestly, I hated looking like a fool but I enjoyed the camaraderie.
Over time, this turned out to be quite a blessing in this disguise. I finally got to learn salsa. Sure, I still do hit the odd face, elbow the tummy and kungfu some poor soul but it’s rare (sort of). I’ve truly learnt to enjoy salsa … (and *gasp* I’m not too bad after all)
There were a lot of other things that had happened along the way in my personal Latin jungle; a lot of emotional ups and downs … scandal notwithstanding as well haha (no, I’m never going to tell) but I’ve learnt that it is good to try … even if you don’t really know what you want.
Salsa seemed so hard at first. And yet, I persevered because I thought that was what I really wanted. However, in the end … I found something else … a community that was so much more valuable than the dance itself and special people who now mean the world to me.
I look back and reminisce … it was just supposed to be about discovering a dance, but I discovered a world.
The moral I learnt?
Try something hard … you never know what treasures await you.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:04 am
yes…one must embraces the unknown having positive visualisation..and when one is positive, one will tend to attract the positive forces as well..and before u know it, u have expanded ur horizon in a way u have never expected.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:01 pm
I once read the slogan my friend pasted on the wall of her cubicle, it had read, “If it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing.” I estimated it would be taken down within a month, it was down within 2 weeks. (Haha, cynical me!)
Which gets to the question, do we simply do something because it is hard to do? Or do we do it because it is meaningful, letting its meaning give us the willingness and courage to overcome all odds?
It appears from your post that it’s the friendships first formed and forged in salsa that gave it the meaning.
May you continue in excellence in salsa!