THE WORLD AS ONE: "I DANCE FOR ME.'"

 

 Degas, The Green Dancer, 1879

The World As One: 

Since our US Presidential Inauguration this January an entire layer of stress has been lifted. Our president cares about the country, the world, the future and the climate.  He cares about justice.  He cares about the poor.  The daily news has a rationality to it that at least 78 million of us (the vote tally for President Biden) had missed.  Presidential policy is no longer hostage to whim, or worse.  For this every day I rejoice.  Never again will something as basic as decency be taken for granted.  

I wrote about this in "There's a Reason to Linger in America Today," posted on Nov. 8, 2020, about how Democratic and Republican poll workers sat masked side-by-side in every state counting votes late into the night.  This was before the January 6, 2021 invasion of the Capitol Building of course. That, like the pandemic, changed us.  We realized even more how precious our democracy is. Since then our ex-president has continued to become more irrelevant, as in every country in every age, former leaders do. 

Then today I checked blog audience statistics.  Readers for the day live in Peru, Turkey, Belgium, Japan, the Philippines, India, Portugal and the US. It's been a different combination every time I've looked. What this says is that far and wide there is a commonality of interests.  It says that although all readers may not be interested in the politics of my country, most of our concerns, including political ones, are not unique to America or any other country.  Large changes in any land can abate stress or increase it.  Small changes in our lives can do the same. Someone in Portugal shares an interest with someone in Turkey in "living simply, loving nature, staying in the present."  Someone in Peru like someone in Belgium, seeks "being mindful each day, nesting, keeping healthy attitudes, and taking time to live well." Someone in Japan is savoring Spring the way someone in India is.  In the Northern hemisphere the world greens; in the Southern the stars leap from the sky toward our astonished eyes. Spring or Winter we reach for calm, for goodness. 

We live day-by-day in worlds we didn't create, under governments we inherited, the lucky of us doing jobs we love or at least tolerate.  Trying as hard as we can, which is always good enough.  

I read a poem published in BellaGracemagazine.com by a young dancer named Emma Smerud.  It reads: 

I do not need to be in the front row 

because I don't need the world to see me.  

I dance for me. 

. . . 

I do not need to be talented to be happy 

because I try as hard as I can.

. . . 

 I try as hard as I can and that is good enough for me. 

. . . 

I don't need the world to see me.

I dance not for them but for me. 

So this is us, in our world as one, in the place wherever it is we live, not needing the world to see us, trying as hard as we can.  Fortunate to be.                                    

                                                                Nina Naomi