Only Once

A friend of mine has had a fatal diagnose - cancer with no hope of healing. It is a terrible diagnose and I can barely divine what is going on inside him. But then - hold on a moment - don't we all have the same diagnose: certain death? Closer or further away? What makes this death so close so tragic? For one thing, we can not ignore its presence any more as we normally prefer to do. Our time on earth suddenly seems limited, we think about what we would want to do, before we go. We look for the sense of our existence. Should not that be something we all should do, all of us with the same diagnose?

To me it seems majorly important to stop this galloping towards death for shorter or longer moments, to stop time. We are all hasting forward with little sense of where we are going. It is infinitely important to stop. To step out of the time current and to feel and reflect. These moments are like stolen moments. It can happen in an intense conversation with a friend, while playing music, while chopping wood, while having sex, while meditating... every one has his or her special way to stop time. One of the most beautiful ones is to dance Tango. Everyone out there making this enormous effort to learn to dance Tango has had these moments. They keep us at it. They let us fly for a moment. We instinctively feel that something important is happening and we are having a taste of this meaning of life without intellectually grasping it (also see my post "Tango is Flow").

Now, if we suppose that our time here is limited, maybe to only a few days, months, years, how do we intend to fill this time? How will it make a difference to live a month longer? What do we choose to do? And how do we choose to do it? I would want to have a real, serious honesty towards myself. Do things right, all the way, with all my heart, never half-heartedly. Ask questions. Allow myself to make mistakes, grow. Be courageous. Make time stop again and again. We do not have the time to do things superficially. It is a terrible waste. This is the way I want to learn Tango. Or I might as well stop right here. I don't want to learn beautiful steps, I want to understand them. I don't want to look pretty in my shoes and my dress, I want to feel it from the inside. I want to stop time for a short moment, a dance, maybe a tanda, together with the person I am daring this adventure with.

And yes, this is a post about Tango.