The wabi-sabi dance of life
letting go of the idea of perfection
“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.” —Martha Graham
I’ll get back to that quote in a minute. Last month, I wrote about my 83 year old mom who has just found love again in a new relationship. She’s cautious around using the word “love” she told me. So she tells me, “I like him very much”. But her energy expresses much more than “like”.
I picked up that there was fear mingled together with her new feelings of love.
And how we all know this one, hey?
I thought ahhh yes, love and fear have had quite a long time relationship in our world, and this relationship of love and fear we all have within us.
And have you noticed that as we align to love and our fears begin to dissolve more and more, wham, a big dose of fear often rises up within us trying to make it’s last stand.
Love and Fear. These energies are at times so closely knitted together that it’s hard to separate them. But we actually cannot be in both at that same time. And that’s a gem to recognize.
We cannot be in love and fear in the same moment.
When fear motivates our actions, the results are more fear. And when we really get this, it moves us to be awake, aware, and fully responsible for all our thoughts and actions, or more accurately the motivations of our actions. Do we want to contribute more fear or do we want our thoughts and actions to result in more love?
Sometimes we are so moved by our heart’s desire to take actions but in our head fear tells us that we are not ready, good enough, skilled enough, etc.
That’s why I love the quote by Martha Graham:
“Nobody cares if you dance well, just get up and dance”
Trying to get it right, trying to be the unattainable “perfect” smothers the creative sparkle within us. Perfectionism can be just another disguise of fear stopping us from just getting up and dancing.
Knowing on the deepest level that we are all a unique expression of love, we step into being here fully and empowering our selves and each other just as we are.
And life becomes a magnificent creative wabi-sabi dance, where we let go of our notions of perfection and revere what’s authentic.
We see every one as an equally evolving creative expression of universal all-encompassing love.