Dancing to The End Of Love and Radiance

The meaning of the word halo is circle of radiance. I heard halo used the other day on a television commercial. They were talking about a furniture store and the sale that week. They mentioned you would feel like a halo was around your head because you would be so happy when you purchased this store’s furnishings. That would be a bit extreme for an advertising gimmick I thought. I have bought lots of furniture through the years, and though I may have felt extremely happy, when it was delivered and placed, I did not see a halo above my head.

I like to express myself through my writings and my specialty of tying in my or other’s life experiences with my and other’s ballroom dance happenings in our lives. Many experience special feelings when they excel at or perform exceptionable unique activities. It can be volunteer work helping others not as fortunate as we. It can be a sport hobby. It can be taking care of a grandchild while the parents work.

I know a senior citizen whose daughter got married late in life and had a child when she was forty. She wanted to continue working, so my neighbor took care of her firstborn grandson all day, five days a week. At first, it was easy because all a baby does is eat and sleep. As he grew older, about two, it became harder. Her husband helped some. It was eight hours, five days a week, and being older it was much harder than when she raised her own children.

One day, she was telling me how difficult it had become as he demanded more time. She did not want to tell her daughter, so she continued. Finally, her daughter put him in a nursery school and the grandmother was only taking care of him two hours after school. I said “You must feel relieved.” She said “I miss him so.” She deserved a halo around her head for what she did for her daughter, allowing her to work and earn money, so the family had easier financial security. Halos have to be earned.

Many ballroom dancing friends who encourage others to dance by their various endeavors deserve a halo. Theodore Herzl, a great statesman, said “The wealth of our country is our workers.” These ballroom dancers, who are also learning, competing, showcasing or just social dancing, who spread the word of dancing to others, who may never have started to dance, deserve halos. A special man I know, from Alabama, is Rene Zgraggen. He is from Montgomery and has a website up that has every single event going on there in that vicinity posted, so dancers and soon to be dancers can find everything about dancing. Rene is spreading the word about dancing to many others. It has been said that words are the soul’s ambassador. Rene, whose websites reach thousands of ballroom dancers daily, deserves a halo in the form of accolades from everyone who benefits from his special writing. His writings inform, encourage, enhance and elevate thoughts of seniors and not yet seniors, to go out and dance. Whatever kind of dance they desire can become a specialty feeling in their daily living.

The specialty evolves into learning to dance, socializing when they dance, maybe showcasing in front of their fellow dancers and challenging their brain to continue to learn. Learning will keep our brain functioning and possibly prevent any disease from robbing us of our mind. That is our goal as seniors, to continue on and maintain our health and good attitudes. Ballroom dancing does not let our minds down. Our minds need to be stimulated. Dancing does that, because one must use their brain to remember steps, arm movements, foot placement and holding our body in the right position.

All this contributes to our deserving a halo. How is that possible? When we preserve our body, mind and soul, because we have been stimulated by this activity that not only makes us smile, but move our muscles and bones, then we have earned our halo. Our halo is imaginary to the outside world. It is imagined by us in our world. We can see it without glasses, contact lenses or 3 D glasses.

Our world is what we think of our self when we are by our self. We may look in the mirror that day and say we do not like the way our teeth look, and get them fixed. We may not like the way our hair looks, and get it styled. We may not like that our day is not full and fun, and go make it full and fun.

However, if we look in the mirror and see someone we think is nice, good, pretty as a picture, and that happened because we are happy we have a hobby or activity that magnifies and embellishes our thinking about our self as a person, then we are more content. So, ballroom dancing not only invites us to be happy, because we are accomplishing a beautiful moment, but it invigorates and stimulates our soul.

Someone once said “If we are happy with our self, then we can help someone else be happy with their self.” Then we will deserve a halo and the halo will be our circle of radiance. Put your halo into place because you deserve it. You are special and a good person. Excellence is rewarded to people who honor themselves because they deserve the rewards.

Seniors like Rene of Alabama who encourage and instill the love of ballroom dancing to others by their actions are now being fitted for their golden halos, to shine above their heads as a frame around a painting. We recognize their integrity and pay homage to their contribution with our gratitude. I try to do this myself by my constant urging all to learn to dance in my writings and coming in 2012, a book on ballroom dance from the amateur dancer (me) and my first professional teacher Laurence E. Miller of Maine and we will be co-writing this book to encourage and establish a book to check it out on. He will write from the professional view and mine on the amateur view. Both views will be blended into a book to keep by your side, giving facts, anecdotes and lessons on life and expounding our views on dance and us dancers. Just writing it will make us winners and winners we are, because we ballroom dance for the health, it gives us, for the wealth to our brains, and mostly for making us happy.

There is a video out online and in it a senior man named Leonard Cohen sings a song called Dancing To The End Of Love. It is so lovely and timely, that one can get a few tears in their eyes watching it. People are dancing in it and the words are so fluent, timely and extra ordinary. One can extrapolate that ballroom dancing can put an invisible halo around your head; I say dancing for and to the end of love is a great mission, we can accomplish all by our self and with our partner.

Ballroom dancing is not the end of love and is to the beginning of love and our love of it, our family, our spouses, our parents (if living) our children, our grandchildren and to love of one’s self. If we care about our self, then we are prepared to relish caring about others. In dancing, one must consider our dance partner, because when we dance, we are one. That ‘one’ is a very distinguished and excellent person and by our dancing, our ‘halo’ sparkles and dancing is our beginning of expression. Expression is articulation and articulate we are when we speak about ballroom dancing to others. Our halos do not slip; they are attached to our individual focus on speaking of our love for this happening in our life.