Category: family

Initiation

Babies are born with few instincts, beyond the most primitive reactions to pain. How to suck, making eye contact, possibly fear of snakes. Most everything we become is acquired via learning. Any baby placed in any social environment will pretty much work out, all things considered .

Of course we learn quickly, spontaneously, consciously and unconsciously. Children are amazingly flexible and accept almost any situation as normal. Until they grow old enough for logic to kick in. Then things get complicated indeed, more so as experience and contact networks enlarge .

So, for the most part, it is no surprise that most people born into any culture support that culture. Not only that, but support their own class and the position of their family in that culture. That is probably a kind of innate human instinct, necessary for tribes and societies to survive .

Oh, of course we can “reprogram”. We often do – or at least think we do – as adolescents, prime youths, or middle-aged adults. How well we adjust to “paradigm shifts” in society – which now  seem to arrive with frightening speed and frequency – depends much on how old we are .

I find that after much turmoil and adjustment as the entire world changed, I still retain many of my early initiations .

For better or worse .

Dance

I courted my wife under false pretenses. At the time I met her, I was heavily involved – for the only time in my life – with a dance group in Cambridge Massachusetts. Mid ’70s, lots of young energy trying to change the world. I went to many events, helped with the light show and administration .

I enjoyed the times, but it was only for a few years. I’m not graceful and have no sense of rhythm. I can’t learn dance steps because I hate being told what to do. So after we were married _ no more dancing except once in a while at weddings and such .

Joan, on the other hand, is a natural. She starts to move unconsciously when she hears music. She loves to get out and sway. She has many fond memories of all the early times she spent in high school, college, and beyond with groups of friends at parties and bars .

Partly, I write this to know that people often turn out to be different than we expect. But the core takeaway may be that dance even for that short time was good for me. I ended a better person for the experience. I wish Donald and Elon would do more of it. 

Dance puts a different perspective on things. Less intellectual, more physical, less meditative, more immersed .

Oh well, at least I got well rewarded.