Who Were You, Before You Knew?

You are all dancers.

This, from a wise teacher named Sarah, to a class of Nia students who spanned the spectrum of form and fitness.  This, to a class bound more by a shared loved of movement, and a hedonistic drive for pleasure, than by any perfectionistic notion that we were there to master the jazz square.

You are all dancers.

Her message was met by groans, many of us embarrassed to accept that designation, hesitant to believe that it could ever apply to us.

Because dancer implies that someone is good at dancing, or maybe that she gets paid to move for the pleasure of others (and, we hope, for her own pleasure, too).  But at one time, when we were mere wisps of the adults we would one day become, all of us danced in the most organic sense; we instinctively moved our bodies, naturally inclined to jerk and sway and stomp.   We responded to rhythm that pulsated in our heads; we translated sweet melodies into motion.  Before we gave it a name, and self-consciously defined the act of moving, we were all dancers.

During that precious period when the me is not yet delineated from the not-me, our curiosity is expansive, our confidence deep.  We are tree-climbers and singers and poets and soccer players.  Because we do these activities.  And that is sufficient.

But somewhere along the way, most of us discard these labels—these identities—as we discard the pink tutu and the paintbrush.  Who me?  I’m not a dancer.  Or a singer.  Or an artist.  Or a writer.  Or a swimmer…

We peel away these labels over the course of childhood and adolescence.  And when we reach adulthood, our other roles—the ones legitimized by financial compensation (worker, boss, employee) or those which are socially sanctioned or biologically derived (mother, wife, partner)–seem to fill up our time and fill in our sense of self.

Perhaps the phenomenon of self-definition is inherently one of constriction.  Based on the repetition of behaviors–which results in habits, familiar and entrenched–as well as the process of conscious choice, we develop a more definitive sense of who we are.  But as we say yes to one option, another necessarily falls away.  And so we define and grow into ourselves, with the lines and limits of our personality sketched ever-deeper.

There are certainly benefits to this; I would never want to return to my teenage years, when my identity was more fluid but also, at times, uncomfortably convoluted.  But I do miss the open-ended sense of self that I used to experience; the idea that I was pliant, that I could be supple and unpredictable, that I could keep changing forever.

At times, adulthood can feel to me a bit like stagnation—as though I’ve theoretically arrived, but not landed quite where I expected.   And this experience calls for recalibration and a softening of plans.  To greet reality we often need to make such concessions in order to accommodate what is, and to adapt to things we never anticipated.

But maybe we can do more than this:  Perhaps by embracing identities we long ago discarded, we can eke out new pathways and churn through periods of stagnation.   We can remember who we used to be, and find again that 5 year-old dancer, just waiting for the music to start.

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So who were you, before you knew?  What did you love to do?  And have you ever tried Nia?  (You can learn more about the fabulous studio where I take classes here. To find a studio in your area, click here.)

Photo by  merlinprincesse via Flickr’s Creative Commons.