“`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ Alice speaks to Cheshire Cat `That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. `I don’t much care where–‘ said Alice. `Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat. `–so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation. `Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.’ (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
Every time we learn something, we grow. Any new experience uses a new portion of our brain. Each piece of information, whether it happens to be an image, sensation, taste, smell, visited web page, new dish, color combination, becomes a file and adds up to the enormous data base that is our memory.
There is a reason why they keep saying that “as long as one lives, one learns”. It’s a continuous process, it gets faster and faster and our storage capacities are amazing. The learning process is cumulative, expanding, with other words it has a snow ball effect.
Every time we learn something new, we get out of the box. It’s getting easier to talk about this, especially that lately I had numerous occasions to get out of the box, to experiment, experience, evolve, as I like to say. For example, recently, I learned how to danse rumba. For me it was the perfect occasion to get out of the box, to finally tackle what I had long time considered a personal limitation. The moment I entered the door at the Dance School, in my mind a voice kept repeating like an echo: “wau! I finally get to do this!…what a relief!”
So you can only imagine my surprise when Primo, our dance instructor, placed us in a dancing position and told us: “The first dance you will learn is Rumba. The only thing you have to keep in mind when you dance rumba is that your steps make a box. No matter what, stay in the box.” And the echo in my mind: ‘What? Box? What is he saying?!
When he showed us the steps, I saw that indeed, they made a box…after ten minutes I was so excited that I had managed to stay in the box that I totally forgot about it. Afterwards he told us that the more we learn, the bigger the box becomes, we can make it as big as we can, we can open it, we are allowed to improvise more, to customize, to personalize, even more, it is going to become an inner box, without limits, but still a box. That in fact this is the secret, to be able to keep the box…to give it our own rhythm, our own shape, to go beyond our limits all the time, but be able to always go back to the box, never to lose the rhythm.
To be able to dance rumba, you have to constantly learn, to permanently adapt to your surroundings, to manage your own moves and be in harmony with your own body and at the same time to be responsive at your partner’s moves so that the final result would be one of total congruence. Rumba is as in life. You need passion, communication, experiment, expansion, but at the same time you have to be able to keep the balance. You always have to have time to go back to the box.
The Growing Tale 