PURPOSE and DANCE

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost,

to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt

What is the purpose of the dance? I simple question that can be understood within the wider existential questions we ask ourselves – one of which is, “What is my purpose?” For some, this does not feature as a major concern as they continue to negotiate the trial and tribulations of everyday life. While for others it becomes such a burning question, that often they go on a quest to find the answer, giving up everything and traveling to other places. Meanwhile, I would think, the answer lies right in front of us. It lies in the living of the profane as much as it lies in the ecstatic experiences of what we would call sacred.

The answer lies in the dancing. Instead of burning our brain into overdrive to figure these things out, we can find an easier path which is to drop into direct experience. Often people think about their purpose as something that needs to be defined reached. A better way of understanding purpose is to see it as a state of being rather than as an end state. It becomes a dance with life instead of a goal to be reached.

These are deep questions with answers that evade us. But we are lucky because we can use the dance to enter these states of being, instead of doing. We don’t dance to create some outcome, the dance itself is the outcome. What a beautiful illustration of purpose. The purpose of dance is the dance. It is the experience of being ourselves. In the dance we feel our feelings, enjoy the sensations of movement and allow our spirit to soar. This is the blissful state of experiencing and just being ourselves. Is this not the purpose of life too?

_Christos Daskalakos