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CANDLELIGHTING

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JUDAISM 101

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    Aren’t we all so glad to take a dip in the pool when we’re hot and miserable?  Not everyone. One says he never learned to swim as a child. Another emphatically states she will not don a bathing suit.  These resistances speak to the twin perils of aging—being acutely aware of gaps in past development and assessing where one lines up now on a societal standard that is deemed impossible to meet.
    So perhaps past learning was ineffective or teaching was incorrect or the experience was a frightening one. Now there are pedagogic and psychological methods to overcome these, if one is open. We’re not talking Michael Phelps or diving; we’re trying to increase a comfort level.
    The bathing suit issue.  Tell me one woman who is completely satisfied with how she looks.  I still love the ad the Body Shop used to portray.  it showed a nude ‘tzaftig’ woman stretched out on a sofa.  Text read: “There are 8 supermodels.  The rest of us look like this.”  Exaggeration?  Yes, but this is how many of us think, that we must meet a tough standard; otherwise, we’re not allowed to be us.  And sure, cellulite, spider veins, dark spots, stuff that jiggles, that’s what we might come to after decades.
    But at this age, any age, we’re still God’s creatures and entitled to be part of life. The real criteria for engagement is up to us. In my teaching of creative movement at various camps, I have had five year old children tell me:
“But I can’t dance.”  Pathetic.  Yet, they weren’t hatched this way. Someone planted this dire message, and now they assumed the identity.
    Same with us now. Can we allow ourselves to get back to authentic desires and impulses underneath the social conditioning and past experiences of ‘failure’?  Alright, so we couldn’t do something back then; perhaps we were even embarrassed by our efforts, and others contributed to our shame.  That is tragic and untenable.  But more tragic is when we keep ourselves locked into the prison of yesterday ongoing still today.
    We are breathing; we are alive.  Life is movement and engagement. So, go ahead, put a toe in the cooling water, and let yourself be buoyed by the floating weightlessness which is how we came into this world.