Its been a while since I blogged. Sometimes you just have to experience life before you write about it I guess.
My recent realisation is about the concept of validation.
I'm not sure how many people have done this but in a recent discussion with a friend, I realised that for many years.. since I was a child I had used dance for validation. Yes validation of my existence.
How many of us do this through various forms? We feel incomplete so we add skills, we improve ourselves, we look outside to others for appreciation to feel like our being on earth is justified. We constantly seek to fill a void. A void that questions whether or not we should take this space and live this life?
So in my case, I had actually used dance as a means of validation. Especially as a child when I was growing up in Australia, to compensate for the feeling of not belonging here.I used the applause and the praise I received as a child when I was on stage as a means of validating my existence. It gave me a sense of belonging. This is all well and good until you get older and start getting compared to other more skilled dancers.
I started losing the validation I gained through performance. I started to second guess myself, my memory, my skill. All these years I was wondering why I found it so difficult to perform all of a sudden. It actually happened over a year or so. All of a sudden I had this aversion to perform and I could not understand why. At one stage my confidence as a dancer was completely broken,I was criticised not praised, scarred in fact my dance was no longer acceptable in my own mind, and I had never truly recovered from that.
But until recently I didn't realise why this scars were so deep, and that the appreciation of my performance meant validation for my actual existence.
If there is one thing certain in this life, that is, even if you are the best, there will guaranteed be someone better. So how can one possibly rely on external appreciation to validate one's existence?
My stage fright became so bad that it was at times paralysing. I've spent years searching how I can improve, trying to become knowledgeable, trying to find the way dance should be practiced and performed "properly" trying to hard to match my own standards in my mind. And also trying to understand why oh why I couldn't translate what I did alone in rehearsal, onto stage. Why this stage fright for someone who once felt most alive on it? why this stage fright for someone who lived on it since the age of 4?
It's not that I was doing all this consciously either, I'd say it was a subconscious glitch, instilled in my mind as a child. The worst kind!!
But having actually understood that, this act of performance was actually my way of seeking validation.. I finally see light at the end of the tunnel. I finally feel freedom in my dance. Sometimes two wires just need to connect in your mind for that light bulb to glow.
And now I know that I actually don't seek that validation through performance anymore.. after going through this journey of understanding my sringaram.. of feeling content with myself just as I am, of feeling comfortable sharing my inner beauty with everything that surrounds me, finally... finally I feel ready to once again just be alive on stage.
good times to come.
lol and it feels so good that I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks, because now I can create whatever I want ha ha! Aaaahhh the freedom that realisation gives.
Wishing you the same freedom ;)
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