Hi, Boomers,
I didn’t dance tango last night and that may be of no concern to anyone reading my blog. I sent an apology to the organizer, a really good friend, and gave her a laundry list of excuses why I didn’t attend. The “I didn’t do this because” gave me a pass for being lazy or resistant or indifferent or “I don’t have a fire in my belly” for going, doing, being in attendance. Lately, I have the latter: I don’t have the fire in my belly feeling for tango.
This is a new feeling for me. I live my passion. And I have many passions. Dancing tango has been one of them for almost 18 years. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Where has my feeling gone, my sometimes addictive behavior. Maybe other things have replaced tango’s allure. And there is only so much energy to spread around during a day. And is that just an excuse? No more energy?
But how can I leave a passion behind? It’s impossible. It will always come back, won’t it? Or do we lose forever the fire in our belly?
Lately, I’ve been hiking. I’m not a hiker by nature or disposition. I love to walk but not particularly uphill. In December, I attended a kind of an infomercial at the A 16 adventure store in LA. For nature lovers, this place is pure heaven. The presentation my marathon runner friends and I attended was about climbing Killimanjaro. I adored the idea of it but was brought down quickly by the immediate conversation that everyone had to start training for the climb. Those marathon runners had twenty legs up on me. I’m a yogi and my sense of the physical is quite different from a hiker’s. Besides I always have difficulty with my hamstrings.
I diligently began my hiking schedule after the holidays. I actually was in better hiking condition than I imagined. Yoga tones and stretches the entire body. This weekend we all went back to A 16 for an introduction to climbing Mr. Whitney as the prelude to Killimanjaro. I didn’t feel a fire in my belly. When the extraordinary guide began to explain the finer points of eliminating waste, I was done in. OMG! I hated to camp as a kid in Yosemite. I thought out-houses were primitive but squatting in a bag was way too much for me. I bit the dust. I wanted to give up on this whole scene and not even do my hike the next day. I stumbled out of the meeting room and wasn’t even remotely interesting in going back to visit guy the hiking shoes.
And then I stumbled out of bed the next day. We all met at Will Roger’s Park for an early morning Saturday hike. I loved it. I loved the challenge and the beauty of being outdoors. We could see the ocean, Catalina Island on one side and the beauty of the rolling, green hills on the other side. It was breath-taking and I had a fire in my belly.
But that same night I had no fire for tango. I was caught up in my “Empowering the New Woman” speech and thought only of perfecting the opening of my speech, crafting the perfect startling beginning. I began to fill out speaker’s data bases like crazy and it went on so long that I got very tired. I looked at the clock and it was the time I usually arrived at my milonga. I wasn’t going to be there. I was’t going.
Today I awoke and was sad about my losing the fire in my belly for tango. Yet deep in my soul, I believe I will go back to dancing tango and that my fire will erupt for the dance. Our passions last forever. A painter paints. A musician plays. A writer writes. A doctor heals An architect builds. An actor acts.
Passion is the source of our finest moments and the essence of our soul.
Namaste
Joan