Hey Gang,
So, first of all, in case you hated the Superbowl's half time show, I am going to go ahead and tell you that I LOVED IT and this is going to be pretty much a love gush to JLo and Shakira. Also, I am having a little whiskey so I might get a little sweary. Feel free to move on to the next post if you're not feeling this. I love you anyway.
As you may or may not know, I am a dancer and have never met a dance form that I did not like. I have studied ballet (every day for about three hundred years), jazz, several modern disciplines, tap, contemporary, ATS belly dance, Salsa, Bachata, Merengue, Cha Cha, Swing, and occasionally finding opportunities to take an isolated class here and there in some African styles and hip hop classes. For years I danced for hours and hours every day. I love it! I even got a Master's degree in it.
That brings me to the personal development work that I am doing now. I won't get too detailed, but, one of the things I am trying to figure out is how I tend to sabotage myself and where it began. (I suspect that we all have some self-sabotaging tendencies.) I have come to realize that I have stayed pretty small in my ambitions -- financial ambitions, artistic ambitions, dance ambitions, career ambitions, everything. After feeling some resistance as I reach higher levels of success in certain areas, I decided to analyze it and find how to change. Why not try to live up to my potential, after all? I won't go into the why of it all, but the fact is that I keep myself from shining too brightly. I have been doing it for years. I don't know if I was afraid of failure, or criticism or losing friends or all of that, but I would shift gears when I was about to breakthrough to a new level throughout my adult life (until relatively recently).
And this brings me to the love gush to Shakira and JLo. These gorgeous, talented (my age, btw) women showed just how brightly they can shine at the Super Bowl. They did it full out and without hesitation. This is what it looks like to be mid forties/fifty when you let yourself shine, or "GET LOUD," as they put it. The haters can just drown in their own haterade because they did a show that revels in all the things that they are. Shakira showed us her Lebanese self, her Columbian self, her sweet self, sexy self, drummer/dancer/singer self, her zaghareeting self (that's the high pitched celebratory noise she made with her tongue part way through her performance). JLo was just as hot and full of celebration of who she is. Her oh-so-very-bright-light shined through her New Yorker flavored hip hop and jazz dancing, her USA and Puerto Rican flag wearing, her fevered salsa dancing. I nearly screamed from the thrill of those JLicious abs holding her up hands free on a pole! (I'm learning her choreography for my fiftieth birthday party, btw.) FIERCE FIERCE FIERCE!
Here is what they inspired me to feel:
In spite of any fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being heard, seen, or offending, fear of showing your work(werk), fear of judgement, criticism, or taking up space I learned to--
Go full out
Be as BOLD as you want to be
Shine your brightest
Work and Werk
The brighter you shine the more people will have to say about it, so just take that criticism as a sign that you are becoming the bright shiny light you always dreamed of being.
Wear sparkles and shake your ass!
If you do all of this you'll just get better with age.
Thank you, JLO and Shakira for being fully yourselves! I am pumped, inspired, and motivated to shine as brightly as I please. You rock. You roll. You go full out.
Also, Fuck fear.
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