To Ease the Passing of Time

The not so young man kissed his wife goodbye and left the house on his old and rusty bicycle in the early morning. He biked approximately 10 km to a cliff by the ocean, tied a rope around a big rock, carefully climbed down the cliff to the water; and then, holding his breath, he dived many times underwater to find cockles and mussels. He climbed back up the cliff only when his bag was completely full, hopped on his bike, and went straight to the local market to sell his catch of the day. After that, the guy went home to his wife. They had supper together, and right after eating, they went dancing the cumbia in a nearby club were other couples were already dancing.

That was in a documentary that I saw on TV a long time ago. It was in Bolivia or Peru, I believe. What I found the most impressive about that story was the fact that the not so young guy still had the desire and energy to go dancing.

The couple danced with other couples, younger and older than them, like they had probably been dancing all their lives, through their laughter and tears, through the good and the bad times. Dancing was part of their lives. To them, it was like breathing and walking.

Maria and I met in a Latin dance lesson a little more than 25 years ago. We took other dance lessons together after that, but we did not practice a lot. We danced when we had parties with our friends and when we were on cruise ships. We danced a few times at the Villa Lucia in Ottawa before it closed down and at the marina in Aylmer.  

A few months ago, Maria and I started dancing regularly again. One night, I don’t know why, we just felt like dancing. We pushed aside the coffee table in the living room to make more room and we danced. The coffee table never went back to its original place. Each night, around the same time, we dance for about 20 minutes. We pick four from the dances that we now: cha-cha, rumba, fox trot, triple swing, jive, waltz, merengue, bachata and a little bit of salsa.

We dance for fun. We are not too serious about it. We laugh a lot when we are dancing. It’s not strictly ballroom like in the Australian movie from 1992. For us, it’s more like club and street dancing. There are a lot of videos online where you can learn new and cool steps and turns.

I think that in our minds, just as in our living room, there are a lot of tables in the way of our doing what we really want to do. The tables in our minds are ideas like we are too young, we are too old, it doesn’t have a real purpose, it’s a waste of time, what would people think, there are so many much more serious things to do, etc.

Sometimes, when I feel a little bit tired and don't seem to have enough time and energy for dancing, I think of that not so young man I told you about. As for the energy, it comes from dancing. All you need to do is get off your butt, move the table, and dance.

Sometimes, literally and figuratively, with your feet or in your mind, it’s time to move the tables and dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH1Z9DEDqpk