A Good Enough Life

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A Good Enough Life

I used to be a massive dreamer.  Almost on the verge of living in an alt reality.  I had a rich imagination & spent tons of time dreaming, writing, reading and well, dancing.  But alongside dancing, writing was my passion.

When I was moving my dad out of our childhood home last year I found pages & pages of started (and never finished!) stories & poems.  Enough to fill 2 banker boxes.  There was no doubt in my mind that I would be a famous writer one day. It was like a second nature to my identity.

And then I  replaced dance with writing, and many years of academia stole away my love for reading & writing for fun.  My journals became dry & more of a stylish bookstack next to my bed.  I literally lost my love.

When I started dancing professionally, I quickly became one of the busiest dancers in town.  I held down 9 shows a weekend (with a full time school roster, part time job, teaching and a Boyfriend….thank god for youth!)  It was apparent to me that I was going to be a famous dancer…and then I went to Egypt.  I realized I sucked (yup hard) and came back with a fever to succeed so badly that nothing else mattered.  I threw in twice weekly rehearsals into my schedule after work, trained my butt off, got my hands on anything I could about Egyptian dance & booked myself into many, many international festivals.  I was determined to make it on the big stage AT ALL COSTS.  My relationship at the time was less than ideal and so this pushed me further.  I look back at this time as one of extreme loneliness, desperation & essentially trying to save myself from an abusive partner.

Once this relationship ended – I was FREE!  I travelled even more, moved to Cairo twice and taught A LOT.  I was still determined to be a world star – my national & international roster was growing for teaching & judging, but I started to have doubt.  I realized that at the expense of trying to pursue this dream, I was losing out on other things.  This little voice kept at me softly at first, and then more & more loud.  I ended up having a major reality check byway of my former mentor whose true nature became apparent when I experienced a terrible situation that placed me in harms way and suddenly my dream of being a famous dancer was shelved.

I realized that pursing these dreams can cut you off from what & WHO is important to you in life.  I recognized the empty nature of stardom & how lonely this life is.  I also realized that perhaps I do not have the X Factor to actually make it as a star.

And then I became depressed.

What do we do when we give up our dreams?  What gives us the fuel to carry on, to pursue that dream life, the good life that we have expected for ourselves?  Maybe we can  pause here & realize that the very fact that we are alive & breathing on this earth is simply good enough.  Not all of us need to make a direct impact on the world at large.  What if we, simply, lived a good enough life?  One where our daily metrics are not controlled by how much money we made or who we saw, what we bought or sold?

One where we are content to rise every morning & slip into our potentially mundane lives where things are simply “good enough”.  Our jobs are there to provide us something to do, income & purpose.  The fact that we all deserve to follow our dreams & find our dream job is spun to us at an early age setting us up for a lifetime of searching, yearning & wishing for something else.  What if we just looked at our  jobs & just said “this is enough?”  And fill up our lives in other ways – activities, hobbies, friends, family.

With the advent of social media and its relentless advertising & promoting of  boss babe culture, being in the best shape of your life, manifesting your dream partner & following your heart I feel that we are missing out on authenticity.  Quite often when we attain our dreams we suddenly grow bored & start pursuing others.  I know people who refuse to work with goals for this reason.

Why can’t we just just accept that we are made to have a good enough life & that that is enough?

My mother had a quote on her FB wall for may years “Somedays you are the statue & somedays you are the pigeon”. I never understood until I got a bit older & came to terms with some of lifes disappointments.

These days juggling a marriage & a baby, a quiet dancing career & questions about what I want to be when I grow up (ha!) I am reminding myself that I really have all that I need to for a truly happy life.  It is ok to have a quieter, almost boring life.  There is beauty in simplicity and that that really is good enough.

  • AR xo

 

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