Tonight I was privileged enough— thanks to my idle self— to chance upon this video by Sir Ken Robinson.
I gotta say that I was slightly irked when I saw his name for the first time because he's got the title 'Sir' right in front of his name. Oh great, another snotty Brit telling us what's wrong with the world, I thought to myself.
Dang. I was so wrong. This 'Sir' is probably one of the wisest, most charismatic, most eloquent, most humorous geniuses whom I have ever spent 20 minutes on my entire life. He does say a couple of very smart and profound things that really hit home with me. True, the video posted above is more about the theme on revolutionising education, an issue now so cliched that we don't even yawn at it anymore. But if one listens to him intently, and takes certain things he says and views them in isolation, one will realise that there are a lot of pearls of wisdom leaping from his stiff upper-lip.
Of course, when I talk about things that hit home with me, I talk about the two things that are central to my existence at the moment: law school and dance— though the latter seems to weigh down on me more than the former does, which actually should not be the case, but this is another issue worthy of an entire post by itself. Now, I want to comment about what he says about passion, or at least what I think passion is:
"I meet all kinds of people who don't enjoy what they do. They simply go through their lives getting on with it... They endure it, rather than enjoy it, and wait for the weekend. But I also meet people who love what they do... If you said to them Don't do this anymore. They'd wonder What the hell are you talking about? Because it's not what they do, it's who they are. They'd say But this is me. It would be foolish of me to abandon this, because it speaks of my most authentic self."
Extraordinary statement. There was a time in my life that I felt that I was one of these passion-laden people, and I'm talking about dance here. I felt that dance was me, it was something that defined me as person, that it was who I am, and that it would be ludicrous for me to abandon it because I felt most true to my self when I'm dancing.
Dang. I was wrong.
I did not have dance as an identity. I was not born with it. I had not acquired or deserved it. Just because I spent hours and hours doing it, talking about it, spending time with the people whom I shared it with, all these did not turn it into an identity of me. The more accurate way to describe my circumstance was that it was something that I aspired to become.
I read a blog weeks ago of someone who has plunged herself into the world of dance way deeper than I have: she takes it as a semi-profession, and she claims it as one of the few aspects that describe and fulfill her and her life. She wrote on the blog that learning how to dance is much like learning a new language. When you learn a piece of choreography from someone else, you are basically learning a message as how it is conveyed by that person. When you're not used to speaking the language or the vocabulary, you stammer and you stutter, and all these translate into your lack of execution of the steps, or your forgetting the steps, or whatever screw-ups you do.
Some people are born dancers, I believe, the way some people are born English. You are English either because your parents are English, or you are born in England, or both. Likewise, some people are born dancers because either they are brought up by parents who are dancers, who teach them about and how to dance, or they are born and brought into this world of dance without even them having realised that the 3 year-old girl in pink leotard and the 4 year-old boy in shiny tap shoes staring blankly back at them in the mirror are actually themselves.
Sadly, I was no English. I wasn't born a dancer. For me, I need to work my ass off to attain some level of fluency that I have at the moment. I did not have the privileges that others might have had at the early stage in their lives. So, dance was— is— not something that was— is— me. No, it is something that I am still trying to be.
In the beginning of Step Up 3, there were all these clips about what dance means to all these great dancers, and there and then I thought that I might be able to used the things they say as inspirations, you know, something that I could tweet about or something. Then, it dawned on me. Seriously, Calvin, what does dance mean to you? Stripped off of other people's perspectives, what does dance actually mean to me? I thought for a while. I guess, I found the answer in the first answer to that question which I told my dance friend years ago when she asked me about it. I said:
Well, I just want to reach a point where I could say to others I dance. And I want it that when I said this, they wouldn't go What a poser. OMG, so poser. No, I want them to react in all sincerity Well, of course. How else would you call what you do? That's you.
Yea, that's what dance means to me: an identity that I will forever strive to attain. I don't know whether there is and should be an end to this pursuit. The same said blogger piquantly wrote once that the answer to the question Am I there yet? is— should be(?)— always No.
Another point I want to make here is that, as pointed out by Sir Ken Robinson, you should not abandon your pursuit so long as it remains a true manifestation of your authentic self. "Authentic self", huh? *Chuckles!* To be brutally honest, I have been ashamed of my authentic self for quite a while, because evidently my authentic self is rather peculiar, unusual, quaint, different. As a result, my sociologically-conditioned consciousness consciously suppressed this authentic self— deep down under. Why? Because it's safer to be one with the herd, to fit into the mold that is expected of you.
This, unfortunately, demarcates the territory of the things that I should do, and excludes part of that which I could do. Just because I could do it, it doesn't mean I should do it; but more importantly, those things I should do, I must could do it. Whether I wanted to do these things or not became irrelevant, or perhaps more accurately, I consequently made it irrelevant. I could then only look at others in envy, watching them doing the things they should, could and wanted to do.
I realise now though, that if I lose my authentic self, I should abandon my pursuit to have what I want to have altogether. It is simply not worth it. Sir Ken Robinson here reminded me that human flourishing is an organic process— personalised, customised, not industrialised. He warned:
"We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it's impoverishing our spirit and our energy as much as fast food is depleting our physical body."
This is the reason why I reached a point where I hated dancing, and to be right on the money, my dancing. I could not accept my interpretations, my movements because others— and I— imposed on me the "singular conception of ability", or in my case the singular conception of what a person in my shoes should do. Really, fear blocked my vision: the fear that bred another fear of others blossoming while I wilt and wither. I have forgotten something that is so simple and so fundamental: the attitude I need to have toward this it that I so much treasure.
"It's about passion. Often people are good at things they don't really care for. It's about passion: what excites our spirit and our energy. And if you're doing that you love to do, that you're good at, time takes an entire course entirely."
I remember looking at the clock during the past weeks' rehearsals and classes once every two minutes, hoping that the minute hand would tick faster. I remember being told months ago that I came to life when I danced my choreography, that my body came to life.
From now own, I'm going to be me. I will try my best to do things I do, not because I should do them, but because I want to do them. What will come of this I do not know, but as what Natasha Bedingfield says in "Shoot For The Stars":
/I rather jump and fall/ than never jump at all/
Sir Ken Robinson's words still haunt me.
Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- Cloths of Heaven, William Butler Yeats
