I’ve been meditating on a song that Garth Brooks made popular over a decade ago called “the Dance”. In the song he is talking about a woman who made him feel like a king but if he’d known how loving her would hurt so much then he might have changed it all to spare himself the pain.
He decides that he is glad that he didn’t know the way it would end because our lives are better left to chance and that pain is a part of the dance of life. I find much wisdom in his conclusions. How many of us, if we knew the outcome of our choices, wouldn’t consider making changes to spare ourselves and our loved ones pain?
As much as we hate to feel that pain and sadness, it is a part of life and molds us into the people that we are. For everything there is a season and a balance – for instance, not enough rain and plants turn brown and grass dies; yet too much rain brings flooding so the plants and grass still die.
Good and evil go hand in hand – a person can’t believe in Jesus without also believing in Satan; you can’t have death unless you first have life. You can’t keep the ying of life in balance without the yang. Our lives are a constant series of choices that make the dance of our lives rich with experiences and loves.
I must agree with the song – I’m happy to live my life with chance and happenstance. Each day is new and beautiful – whether I enjoy it or not is up to me. If I were in total control over the dance of my life, I’d surely make quite a mess of it all.
Whether my life is a smooth, slow dance or an exuberant tango – I enjoy being a part of the rhythm of all that is around me. Close your eyes, relax, see if you can feel the primal vibrations of your life’s dance exuding from every fiber of your being.
One of the main reasons wealth makes people unhappy is that it gives them too much control over what they experience. They try to translate their own fantasies into reality instead of tasting what reality itself has to offer. –Philip Slater
