A passage is, by definition, something transient. You don’t stay there, you pass through. We know this from music or sailing or dance. We also know it from our lives.

In dance, as in all the others, there are easier and harder passages.

A number of years ago, after not performing for many years, a friend asked me to be in his ballet, -- a ballet that would be performed live. I hesitated but agreed and learned the part. A few weeks of rehearsals went by, and I was having trouble with some of the harder parts in the solo. It had been made for the other dancer who would be performing it most of the time (I was the understudy) and there were parts I just couldn’t seem to get.

Late one afternoon, I went into the studio alone to rehearse. During that rehearsal, with the light outside fading to darkness, I focused on the hardest passages. I went over and over them trying it different ways, or stopping and just listening to the music, visualizing the steps in my head.  I might have been there for three or four hours. As I turned off the lights and headed home that night, I knew I had found the key. I knew it would be ok. And it was.

What happened in that studio?

Often, when I am going through a hard passage in my life I think of that evening and wonder how it can help me in what seems like an unrelated challenge. But, aren’t all challenges, at their core, related?
Here are a few things that I believe helped me get through to a better place that evening:

Faith, tenacity, creativity, solitude, and love.

The only reason I went to rehearse was because I knew I had a problem. I also knew it could be fixed. I had faith I could find a solution because I had seen it happen over and over in my dance life. I also knew it would take some time and that I would have to stick to it. But it was my faith it could be done that shines through all these years later.

Which brings us to the quality of tenacity, that mindset everyone talks about and that is seminal to all achievement outside the ordinary. The act of going back when we fail and trying again in a different way, with a different perspective or energy or inspiration.

Which leads me to creativity. Tenacity can help you stick to the rules, but creativity is more about humility and quiet listening. It’s a deep form of trust in something bigger than your own intellect or talent or ability. It opens doors you hadn’t seen before.  

And that leads somehow to solitude. I am a big fan of other people’s wisdom. There is so much to learn. But, when the challenge is mine alone, I can gather ideas from others but only I can decide how I’m going to use them. It’s a lot like learning how to dance. No one can dance for you, not even a partner. They can help, but it’s yours to do.

Which leaves us with love.

We need to love something or someone in order to bother with any of this. Love of self is both limited and limiting. I know that in the studio that night my love for the ultimate success of the piece was what drove me. I didn’t want to look like a fool on that stage, true, but even more I didn’t want to disrespect the piece, to disappoint the other dancers, or the choreographer. So, I worked on the hard passages and found a way through. A way that enabled me to perform the ballet, but that also taught me a lesson I continue to use when life gets hard. And it does.

We each need to make the time to walk into that darkening studio, turn on the lights and the music and hunker down. To be motivated by faith; unwilling to give up; open to inspiration; aware  that solitude allows us the space to realize we are never really alone; and deeply grateful that what blesses us, eventually,  blesses everyone else.

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