What is worth it?

Osvaldo y Coca Cartery.jpg

What do you live for? Do you have any time to think about it? Are you busy with innumerable tasks? Are you struggling for survival? Do you live in a place affected by war? Probably not, I guess, since you are reading this.

Since we exist we are in need of nutrients, shelter and affection. Our parents or guardians provided us with these things in our childhood, in ways and amounts that depended on their situation.

We are educated in order to be able to earn our own subsistence, provide ourselves with shelter and find affection. And eventually do so for others.

Eventually we should think about it. Is that all?

A man, or woman, wants to learn to dance tango. Why? Because we are meant to do it. The rest is either preparation or avoidance of it.

If you were in a place affected by war, you would either drop out by hiding away, or escaping; or you would choose a side and fight. In peace, we are able to be good and beautiful. In war, we most likely become horrible and evil.

Tango is a language that allows you to speak with your whole being. Your entire body is talking, in verses, or in a poetic prose, with an everyday colloquial conversational style that can speak in very deep and charming phrases.

Why should we choose to be charming? As humans, we are learning all the time, and, inevitably, teaching and educating others as well in the process. We must seduce others to bring them into the task of making this world a place we can be proud of.

We must engage in this task with the same fatalism as if we were fighting a war. Those who do not take on the challenge of improving this world by improving themselves are too weak, or cowards, and we should avoid have to deal with them as a burden. Our success depends greatly on how we deal with them. They are much more numerous, let’s keep that in mind. We cannot exhaust ourselves in fighting against them. We have a daunting numeric disadvantage, so we must focus on using our energies in the most efficient way.

Why are we so insecure when we start dancing for the first time? Because we are exposing ourselves. We realize how transparent we become when dancing. We could hide who we are to others by learning and rehearsing a choreography, perhaps. We can hide ourselves from others by acting as a character instead of being who we are. But tango is improvised and spontaneous.

To explain to a person with no sensitivity what you feel is always frustrating. But an insensitive person will never learn to appreciate what you appreciate if you do not find a way to get him or her to understand. We are obligated to find a way to educate. This take on our responsibilities provides us with the benefit of opening us to a greater knowledge of ourselves, and further improvement of our individualities, as well as the world we live in. Our sensitivity develops with everyone else.

It is, like learning to dance, the development of a habit, or the replacement of one habit with another one that is more effective, more elegant.

In this regard, working on our habits is a priority.

Where is “sensitivity” located? Do not waste time looking anywhere other than your own body.