The important is to dance
Take life with light-heartedness, follow the flow, and don’t forget to have fun.
- Me
The book I would like to unfold this post with today is The Virgin Way, by Virgin founder, Richard Branson.
It’s a brilliant read for many reasons. I’ll write about Accounting is for accountants, or how focusing time and energy on deepening one’s strengths and only ever mitigate our weaknesses so they don’t drag us down in another post, but today’s topic is about dancing.
Richard Branson dedicates a whole chapter of his book to the importance of running parties with and for his employees, do PR stunts, and overall be able to take himself not too seriously from times to times.
Backflips in the sunset? Oh yes.
I’m currently in Brazil (have a look here if you want to see more photos), where dancing is supposedly a pillar of the country’s culture. A colourful conversation with a local brought us to the conclusion that, ultimately, the important was to dance. All our conversation revolved around the ability to take life with a grain of salt, to focus on the beauty, to sit down on a beach to watch the sunset, to go with the flow.
This simple sentence summarized the moment so beautifully.
The Important Is To Dance
I barely speak Portuguese, but I’m learning fast and it’s a lot of fun. My interlocutor that day barely speaks English, which is the norm in most of the world, contrary to popular belief... So our conversation involved a lot of hand gestures, body language, smiles, awkward silences, phone translators, break-through moments of mutual understanding that felt magical. It was a dance. It felt important. We were following the flow of the moment. It was enlightening.
This notion of flow is foundational to me. Every time I think about it, one image in particular comes back to my mind. When I was a kid, I spent two weeks every summer in the Bassin d’Arcachon, a pocket of beauty on the Atlantic ocean coast near Bordeaux. There, we would go bodyboarding with my cousins for hours straight, only quenching exhaustion with Nutella, bread and water, before hitting the waves again.
In that area, there’s a current that forms along the beach, called Courant de baïne, which can drag you somewhat offshore and definitely sideways. The advice of my uncle still resonates in my mind every time I feel dragged by current somewhere in the world, figuratively or, as I’m in the ocean almost every day at the moment, very practically.
Don’t even try swimming against the current, you will eventually lose. Let it carry you, but keep your focus on getting back to the beach, even if it’s two kilometres further down. Walking back is easy, swimming is not.
- My uncle
Not everything is worth fighting against. Sometimes, accepting the constraints of the current situation, finding beauty and happiness in whatever is reachable within a few dance moves, that’s real wisdom.
The adults do what they love. The wise love what they do.