Appreciation

I’ve been dancing 4 days this week so far. Going to make it 5 and 6 this weekend.

On Monday night, I learned the basic steps to the Brazilian dance zouk. Tuesday was a follow-up class. Besides learning the footwork and technique the most important lesson I’ve learned is two-fold:

1. Dance is about the physical connection. Sounds obvious right? But it’s easy to get wrapped up in perfecting the technique that you forget you’re dancing with another human being. Being able to lead and follow is about being in tune with with another person and it’s a large part of what makes dance fun. That genuine human connection.

2, When one of my instructors saw my frustration and focus on mastering a part of my technique, he reminded me, “it’s not about you, it’s about her. You want to make her happy. Let her show off.” I let that sink in a bit.

Yesterday and today I went to salsa class. Something felt off yesterday and I couldn’t place my finger on it. I think it was just shaking off the rust and trying to catch up to a faster pace. Today I felt much more comfortable as the instructor pointed out small adjustments that made my feel much smoother. But the biggest lesson was at the end of class.

I was chatting on the sideline to one of the guys that came with his girlfriend/wife when a woman approached me apologizing for last week (I had asked her to dance after class but she wanted to dance with her friend, which makes sense and I had completely forgotten about it). She asked if she could make it up and we danced for a bit. Now keep in mind that while I’ve been dancing salsa for a few months now and I’m not a total beginner, I’m nowhere near the comfort level where time seems to warp. And this woman was breathtakingly good, on the performance team, etc. But she was patient and she went with me, helped me fix a few things and joked around and made me comfortable when I made mistakes, which was.. quite often esp. as the track changed to a very fast-tempo song. In short, she focused on me and made me feel happy. I was literally grinning ear to ear on the way back.

Really, the key to human happiness then, is really simple: people want to feel genuinely appreciated in a nonjudgmental way.

I’m sure you’ve all been in situations where someone’s acting fake or insincere. They’ll say things for the sake of conversation but not actually mean it. And it sucks because it’s like why make the effort at all? I’m not guiltless either, but I am going to start paying more attention because it was such a good feeling. Genuine appreciation. Give and take. Or rather give > take.

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