“Be silent and listen: Have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of you madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life. If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature. Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim.
Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.“
It’s been one of those weeks of self-doubt, frustration, stress, unprofessional idiots, regrets, and dealing with a lot of back & forth about what to do & where to go from here. This piece by Rudyard Kipling (it’s for us daughters too!) is exactly what I needed to feel like Aaliyah..and dust myself off & try again.
“If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”
-Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father’s Advice to His Son
ARTS: JUST DANCE, GONNA BE OK, DA DA DOO DOO; THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION TO STRESS
Today’s Mood Ingredients: Euphoric, Free, Alive.
Stress. Overwhelming stress. It’s very rare that people today don’t have it. It varies in levels depending on a number of factors; career, family, emotions, personality, lifestyle, income, desires, etcetera, but it’s there. Silently waiting to attack when you least expect it, rendering you manic or crazed or depressed or angry. Let’s say you can’t quit your job to own a farm in California or live a spa life in Arizona. You can’t quit your family, you can’t shirk your responsibilities, you can’t overcome your sporadic but prevalent emotional tsunamis. So, what do you do? Release it. For me, the greatest and truest inanimate, intangible passion of my life is dance. Any form. Drunken, choreographed, impromptu, rehearsed, performed, jumping & booty-bumping with my 2.5 year old nephew, ballroom dancing with the puppy. ANY. If it was possible to bottle the feeling that radiates within and out of me when I’m dancing, I would be in direct competition with the Onassis family as wealthiest around. However, I cherish the fact that the feeling is so inexpressible for me because I get to have a sense of public privacy.
The audience sees a performer on stage expressing lyrics and movements to given music, but much of the time, the performer is in a whole different secret world. I have literally been brought to tears or euphoria on stage depending on the day of performance, & the people, who I don’t even register in my consciousness, applaud. They applaud for a technical performance that hopefully connected with them in some way. What they don’t realize is that the emotion that’s coming off in waves from the stage to the audience at such a high frequency is the tumultuous collage of my innermost fears, happinesses, struggles, tears, accomplishments, sadness, & stress being released. They are privy to something they don’t even know of, & for a hyper-private person like me, it’s my way of “talking about my feelings.” Dancing has saved me from a lot in life. It has protected me from a lot in life. It has given me a lot in life. It is the only outlet that still serves to shatter my anxiety, my founded & unfounded worries, & my fears. The best way to describe it, I suppose, is by using my favorite quote, also tattooed on my ankle: “In life, as in dance; grace glides on blistered feet.” When I’m dancing, I’m at my most euphoric. When I’m dancing, I’m at my most tranquil. When I’m dancing, I’m at my most giving. It’s a blind & frozen moment in time where everything is nothing and nothing is everything & I’m spinning along with the world in harmony.
Everyone deserves this. You deserve to feel this way about something in your life, if not necessarily dance. When things are piling up & suffocating you under their deadweight, find your own outlet. You don’t have to be good at it. Contrary to popular & incorrect belief, NO ONE CARES.
“Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.”-Charles Caleb Colton
Is splattering paint across a canvas therapeutic? Do it. Listening to music? Blast it. Playing sports (not my forte!)? Kick it, pitch it, run it. Writing? Scribble it. No one is expected to be the next DaVinci, Stevie Wonder, Jackie Robinson, Ernest Hemingway, but you are expected to somehow be able to enjoy this life without needing an industrial-strength antacid twice a day. I’m lucky that I found my meditation at the age of 3, but “too late” is a phrase I’m just starting to eke out of my vernacular, & I suggest you do the same for “life is short, but sweet for certain.”
Today’s Interlude: “Dance Dance Dance” by Lykke Li
champagne & cookiedough 