Dancing With Myself
At last Friday is here. Retired, five or so years are in the rear view mirror, I only have a memory of deadlines, of moral and financial and administrative accountability with co-workers and customers. That was my life. All is change, and everything, no exceptions has its season.
All is now, – a flow of humankind, transmission of generations beyond the reach of memory to our present situation.
And what is this season where I now find myself along with you? As the 17th century poet John Donne eloquently expressed:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
What is our season at present?
Maybe Ranier Maria Rilke portrays our location with his poem The Panther. The poem describes a caged panther. What sense arises within when you read these words?
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
Here’s a tune, – you can hold onto the melody, to reflect upon the lyrics. Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself.
3 thoughts on “Dancing With Myself”
A couple of very powerful images.
This morning I was contemplating the connection we all have with each other and marveling at the vast differences in how the mind of humans can function throughout the diaspora of our species. I find it difficult to wrap my head around the concept that Alfred Einstein and Donald Trump are members of the greater human tribe. It is as if they are from entirely different species.
And Wilke’s caged panther is beyond sad. He is clearly a metaphor for our own imprisonment. Much like my caged man.
Dancing With Myself or simply the dance – is actually a metaphor for wanting to be alone. For some people it happens once in a lifetime, for others it happens multiple times in their lives. It usually occurs when a person wants to shield family and friends from an impending loss. In the wild when an animal “knows” the end is near they separate themselves from the pack or herd and head off to die alone. Domestic pets oft hide in closets or under furniture due to this instinctual need for a secure, low-stress environment to parish in. The legendary ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching writes “Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.” He taught that all things arise from “being” and return to “non-being”. Death is simply a transition back to the formless, the eternal Tao. He suggested that “if you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve”. By letting go of the fear of death, one is liberated to live fully in the present. Enjoy the dance, it’s liberating!
Superbly expressed. A lesson some take from experience. Sadly – not all.