When life trips you up, what will you do?
This past weekend, my amazing dance instructors, Raul Santiago and Yesenia Serratos-Santiago, took to the floor in Palm Springs to perform their new Latin Hustle routine. They are both seasoned, long time professional dancers. After months of practicing they had a missed moment in the routine.
As a former professional skater, I know what that feels like. The beauty of it is that, unlike life where we often indulge ourselves in hours, days or weeks of contemplating how to get back up again when we get knocked off our feet, in performance there is barely a split second to make your choice. Lay there a victim to the circumstances or bounce back up and get on with your routine.
Yesenia chose to stay in action toward her goal. She chose this from a place of strength, not victim. She had every right to say ‘poor me’. To stop and assess the damage. To try to go back and figure out what went awry in the lift. Instead, she chose to dance.
As Raul shared after it was all over, “As professional dancers, what is most natural when we fall down is to get up and do the next step. If you don’t, this one moment becomes the highlight and you miss the opportunity to do all the great moves that followed it.”
Dance teaches us life lessons. When we take risks, there is a chance sometimes it won’t work out as we planned. However, when life throws us a curve ball, we can, like Raul and Yesenia, choose to keep dancing.
