Creating something, like a school with a hundred people visiting every week, a community that provides culture, friendship, and enjoyment. I mean we know where things come from but that doesn’t make it less impressive. We just become so used to the amazingness that we stop realising how incredible the world around us is. I am not talking about computers, AI, and huge buildings that shake on purpose so they don’t collapse. I am talking about you and me, capable of learning, evolving, losing, and gaining weight. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful it is to see someone learning to do something that they thought they were not capable of doing. When they take some insights, they practice and make them part of their habits and now they are better.
Now let’s pay attention to you, yes you! You are so capable. You are reading these words, that is language, and yes everyone does it but there was a time when you couldn’t. You cannot walk, talk, or appreciate a great song that feeds your soul and pumps your heart with glorious feelings. Some people can’t do those things. But hopefully, you can.
We are not stationary beings. We are living, evolving beings ready to absorb information and transform ourselves yet again.
Twelve years ago, I remember being at home in Venezuela. We had a huge underground tank of potable water, the square-shaped lid was around 50 cm on each side. I stand on it trying to reach something beyond it, without realising the lid was loose, and tripped into the tank. As a reaction, I reached a nearby wall on my right side that ended up holding all my weight and dislocating my shoulder. An injury that seems simple and easy to recover from but that stayed with me for around nine years. I will say this because of ignorance. But a few years back I started working with John, my physiotherapist, who told me, “You are going to heal, it just takes time.” Well, it took a lot of light weight lifting and after a few years it disappeared completely. But I did not realise it because I was not paying attention to it. I let it be like it always was, but it wasn’t, after social dancing or training almost every day I was complaining, but complaining seems to be our default way of paying attention to things.
How do you know when a referee, umpire or judge is good? Because no one is talking about them. When they are good and they are doing their job well, they are invisible, and of course, some of the decisions, even the fair ones, are not appreciated by some of the spectators but that is not what I am talking about. I believe that the things we learn well become imperceptible for us and we forget to appreciate our own greatness. Sometimes we are surrounded by others that can’t see those little amazing things that we have done and achieved. So it is on us to create a mechanism that brings to the light how incredible we are. How impressive it is that my shoulder is healed and that I can dance and write for hours, that I love teaching, and so many people have learned dancing because of my teaching. I remember some of you the first day, and I remember that you were great because you came to class and challenged yourself to learn something totally out of your comfort zone.
Thanks to my older brother, El Flaco, I have a Google note that holds a plethora of quotes from great writers, movie characters, and my grandma. I love that little document that I frequently now add to and sometimes read. Last week, I started a new one called “compliments” with some of the sentences that some people tell me. This is an idea that I took from Mathew Dicks. I believe it is a great reminder of achievements, that brings awareness to those actions you have endured that make you who you are. Dany, my younger bro, gave us a compliment where he described how proud he was of us as his brothers, and how beautiful it is that despite the distance and the infrequent communication, we know that we have each other. I thought about that for a few days and I did not want to lose that. So now I will have a little list of sentences that will bring to awareness some of my bright moments. The brain is already so good at bringing darkness, so it is great that we have something that fills our hearts when we need it.
I honestly want to know what are the things that you do to bring awareness to your great amazing learning in life. Like writing in a journal, going out with friends or just talking with your significant other or mother sometimes.