Spotting

Not that kind of spotting.  Not that kind either.  Unless you're a dancer, in which case, yes, that kind.  Spotting is a dance term, a way for a dancer to do a fast 360 turn without tilting or getting dizzy.  The idea is to look at a spot and keep looking at it while the body is turning, then whip the head around and find that spot again to complete the turn.  I was never very good at it when I took dance classes (and I've taken just about every kind there is, including West African, contra, tap, jazz, country western, etc.  I love to dance!).  My neck isn't very flexible, and instead of spotting properly, I would whip my head around wildly and not always be able to find my spot again.

Recently, as I was dancing my ass off in the living room, I was doing some turns, and discovered that it's possible to spot in intervals.  Instead of trying to go from Point A back to Point A, I found Points B and C as I turned, and it really made a difference in steadiness and no dizziness.  No one in all my classes had ever mentioned that spotting could be incremental like that.  Of course, I wasn't turning as fast as a professional does.  I mean, have you seen Ann Miller or Eleanor Powell doing dozens of turns in a row, always with a smile, always coming back around the face the camera, never toppling nor staggering?  I suppose if one is turning fast enough, incremental spotting isn't possible.  But for me, it was a revelation.

I just know there is a life lesson in there somewhere because there's always a life lesson.  Is it that it's okay to be incremental even if it means never being best at anything?  Is it that what is a great discovery for me is something other people do naturally and I'm just slow to learn?  Maybe it's that I like to do things the easier way, which accounts for why my successes are so minimal?  I like to think the takeaway is that I'm still capable of learning, which is a good thing, because circumstances and the body are always changing, so it's always going to be necessary to adjust, amend, revise, redo, learn anew.

Maybe it's just that it's all right to do something in whatever way works best for me and not always be comparing myself to the Eleanor Powells of the world.  I mean, I'm not even trying, have never tried, to be a professional dancer.  Sometimes I think I spend more time in fantasyland than in my own life.  Is that true for everyone, I wonder?  Do we all go through our days thinking "I made a nice stew, but it's not as good as Julia Child's" or "Here's how I would handle the paparazzi" or "I wonder if I'll ever meet Johnny Depp or Dolly Parton" or "Am I too old to be an astronaut?"?  Does everybody have this rich internal world occupying more than half her brain pan?

But I digress.  This is about spotting.  Really, I think the life lesson is "So what?  Big deal.  Stop thinking so much about the mechanics of turning and do something important."  Something like that.