Death and Dancing
two things I have had on my mind lately, one is more fun than the other
I’ve been thinking about mortality a lot lately, for some reason. There doesn’t seem to be a particular catalyst for the fixation; at some point I just thought, one day I will cease to exist, and the thought decided to stick around.
Death is one of those things that most people choose not to think about, only acknowledging it when forced to by circumstance.* The circumstance is all around us at the moment, though, reports of deaths and other forms of endings a constant hum that ebbs and flows but never completely disappears.
Aside from the general state of the world, other factors contributing to my morbid focus may include, but are not limited to:
Significant life events in the worlds of my friends and acquaintances. Marriages, career moves, birthdays, etc. etc.. Inevitable to think about how grown-up these things seem, and then about how grown-up I, in turn, must be, and then how everything crumbles to dust eventually and time is rushing past me while I look at another engagement photoshoot on Instagram.
Vague dissatisfaction with my work life, leading to pensive stretches of time staring at a blank wall and/or word document wondering how I got here, considering my unequippedness, oscillating between feeling like a tiger stuck in a cage and a second-rate con artist, and thinking about how time is rushing past me while I look at another meaningless press release email.
Horrendous admission to make but I do enjoy the odd true crime podcast** and some do involve a degree of death. I’m not about to turn into one of those women with an ‘in case I get kidnapped’ binder, but I am deliberately exposing myself to death-adjacent media, which I acknowledge may be subconsciously causing my brain to latch onto the theme. Also, I’m often on a walk when listening to podcasts which turns my brain off a bit, and gives me time to reflect on how time is rushing past me.
Whatever the cause, I’m not a fan. Beyond the broad existentialism of it all, that strange floaty feeling that comes from thinking about your place in the world for a bit too long and the continual refrain of The Flaming Lips’ ‘Do You Realise?’ running through your mind, is the overwhelming feeling that I am wasting my brief time on this planet.
A few years ago I was told that the way I thought about the world, the way I was interacting with it at the time, was similar to that of someone who was grieving. I had, and have, a feeling that I need to catch up, to make up for lost time. Where the time has been lost is not always clear, nor is what I need to do to claw it back. Unfortunately, that does not stop me trying in the slightest.
In tandem with the fear of being behind, is the feeling that I’m running out of time, off track to complete or achieve things. Something of a perfectionist, I always want to be the best at whatever I do immediately, with little to no effort. Regretfully, this is rarely possible.
I do think of myself as quite a lazy person, all things considered. I spent the first 18 to 19 years of my life absolutely squandering my potential, taking the easy route whenever possible and refusing to push or challenge myself in any meaningful way. Maybe it’s harsh to judge a seven-year-old for not having put her all into early-grade ballet classes, but I don’t care. She should have been excelling at them, along with horse riding (given up because I didn’t like getting up early on a Saturday) and piano (never practiced then cried because I didn’t want to get in trouble about it). The idea of ‘healing your inner child’ is a popular one as of late, but I’m operating more along the lines of ‘feeling low-level resentment towards that inner child because you wish she’d worked harder’. But I suppose that doesn’t have the same ring to it.
The frustration I feel with my younger self for not having tried harder, kept up with activities rather than opting to either sit around or spend time with friends, is pretty unfair. I’m well aware of that fact, that anger at my child self is not going to change anything. Nor does it recognise that, if I was as advanced at various skills as I want to be at this point in life, I probably would’ve had a fairly miserable childhood. Retrospectively, I want to have been one of those kids who was shuttled from activity to activity, practicing the violin in their break between learning a third language and gymnastics class, but I know deep down that I wouldn’t have liked it at the time.
Over the last few months I’ve been tentatively getting back into some old hobbies, particularly dance. Having spent 15 years of my life working on posture, positioning and technique each week, it’s an odd feeling to return to the movements in a body no longer used to the sensation.
None of the three classes I’ve attended recently have been in ballet, the style I ‘trained’ in. I think that’s because of fear, to some degree. I was never very good to begin with, and after a five-year break I doubt I will have miraculously improved, uncovered some latent skill that was lying dormant. My love for dancing was also so intrinsically tied to where I was, who I was with, that the idea of going to a studio full of strangers—many of whom will have been trained more formally, been more dedicated as infants, molded their bodies to make the right shapes and motions—is daunting. I have decided to keep trying, though, no matter how intimidated I am by the dancers who effortlessly execute triple pirouettes and pick up choreography after watching it a single time.
Perhaps the best way to stop feeling so strangely about the fragility and impermanence of life is to get up and do something, disregard the past and work with what you have rather than acting philosopher and spiraling into a pit of unjustifiable regret and malaise. That’s the advice I would give someone else, anyway. Maybe one day I will feel caught up with myself, happy with where I am and what I can do. The future is an uncertain thing, riddled with opportunities on the road to a certain finale. Hopefully one of the twists on that road involves me being able to do a tour jete without looking like an idiot.
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* I hope I’m not ostracising the goth and edgy-kid community with that statement.
** The investigative journalism ones, not the terrible commentary ones! Please reserve at least a little judgement!
‘Vague dissatisfaction with my work life, leading to pensive stretches of time staring at a blank wall and/or word document wondering how I got here’—this made me cackle (& think of incessantly checking the Linkedin jobs page at you know where)