A Metaphor Of Life And Happiness

“The word dance is the world’s metaphor. They say you should dance in your living room if you have no other place to go.”  These are two sayings I love. My little granddaughter can dance anywhere and she moves her hips like a Latin ballroom dancer getting ready to dance in a ballroom dance competition event. I think this is something innate, not something really learned.

When we learn to ballroom dance, we also in later stages, learn how to move our arms, hands, neck and head. In fact, sometimes there are teachers who specialize in the arm movement and we take one extra lesson and she teaches us how to do this all gracefully. It really helps because when you are competing in a competition, the judges notice all these movements and mark you accordingly. People think it is only the movement of the feet and the pretty dress a woman is wearing that counts.

Everything in life is made up so many components, just like dance. When we are young we are solely dependent on our parents and they teach us everything we know and care about. When we become teens, we want a bit of independence in some things. When we learn to drive a car, then we surely know we are independent. Of course, we are not. We still rely on our folks to pay the car insurance, fill up the gas tank, and provide us with food, clothing, compassion, caring and love.

This is how life is. We can depend and trust on our self for most things; however, there are many times we need and seek others to talk with us and to maybe help us some. My son told me in his later years, not when he was a teen, that he gets angry when someone mistreats me. He said I was and I am always there for him as a child and an adult too. He cited many instances in his childhood, when a kid relies on his parents for things happening they do not know how to help themselves. It was so cute that he remembered one instance when he was about nine and he went to a small summer camp here in the county. He was hoping to get the lead in a short play the owner was preparing for the final days and he did not get it. He was disappointed and Mom did what Moms do, she consoled him and everything was fine once again.

I had forgotten that because starting with the sixth grade in elementary school, he had all the leads and the first one then was being Tom in Tom Sawyer and then going on in high school to have the main lead in every play during his time there for the three years that high school was back in the olden days of 1981-1983.

We all need assurance and love and kindness and I noted that when Mom was in her seventies and having health problems; I tried to listen to her and her health complaints and worries and looking back now, I could not put myself always in her pain zone, being a healthy forty something. I tried and I took her to various doctors to seek help and a diagnosis and when it was a faraway office, my brother would take off of work and accompany her.

My dad had one sister left living way back in 1949 or so who was alone because she had never married. He felt it his responsibility to visit her at least every other week. She had no telephone so he could not call her. She could call us if she went to a telephone booth and I believe that now days, 99per cent of phone booths are no longer around. He had to try to work these visits out during the week because some Saturdays and Sundays he had to work. One visit time during his usual visit day, he had to work.

He came the following week and he had a key and when he opened her apartment door which was downtown here in Baltimore City, he looked and looked and he found her lying on the floor. He called an ambulance and he was told that she had been gone for over a week. She was not friendly with any of the neighbors, she kept to herself. They had to by law to do an autopsy and she died of natural causes and she had been gone for six days.

Dad felt very guilty because he had missed his usual visit. The other brother came to see her perhaps twice a year and the remaining sister was very ill herself and could not visit this sister.

We told Dad not to beat himself up over feeling guilt, he had been as devoted a brother as was possible and going on three transit buses to visit her was quite a chore. He usually brought her some of Mom’s homemade cookies and other baked goods and at least once every month, she was invited to eat a Sunday dinner with us at our house.  She had to take three transit buses to see us; that was a very fine and delightful trip for her to come and eat Mom’s home cooked food and to visit for a few hours. Then she had to take the three buses back home since we had no car at that time to take her back.

She was lucky; Aunt Jenny was her name that Dad cared about her to make his every two week visit and for Mom having her for dinner at least once a month. She in her older, single and lonely years had we four to care about her and this gave her great solace. Dad was solicitous of Aunt Jenny and she loved him and us for that.

In her youth, she had the chance to marry a man of wealth and she chose not to because she thought him not educated enough. However, he was well to do even then because he owned a used furniture store and it developed into a new furniture store and he acquired a lot of money. He went on to marry someone and they lived in great luxury for the rest of his life and he had many children and even many more grandchildren.

It is proper and fine to have people you can depend on during good times, emergency times and ordinary times. This is what life is all about and as the saying states that dance is the metaphor for the world, so is caring and love also the metaphor in life.

Raphael Kraus said “a metaphor is the language of poetry.” If this is so, then poetry in our lives consists of helping, caring, loving and being around for others and them for us too.

Dr.Ben Carson in his book Take The Risk which he graciously autographed for me when I met him on April 7, 2013 at a Carson Scholarship banquet, said “Do you have a brain? Then use it. That is my prescription for life, love and success in a dangerous world.”