Have you ever done a street performance?
I believe courage is not a way of doing things, but a way of being. And being is a matter of practice. The more you express yourself and allow yourself to be seen in all your glory and imperfection in various circumstances, the more you embody, live, are courage. And once you are courage, it’s easy for it, for you to shine through in anything you do. So I take opportunities to be courage, even if they don’t have anything to do with the specific things I am working on creating.
Like this dance in the park! The idea popped up randomly in a talk with my friend Cristina, founder of Ritmul Interior – an amazing dancer, coach and facilitator of workshops for dance and discovering your inner rhythm in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. ‘How about a dance street performance in the park?’, ‘Hell yes! I would love that!!! Let’s do it!’. We got an awesome Spotify playlist with autumn tunes together, a speaker and a contribution box and went for an hour’s dance in the park.
What I personally found most fascinating was the interaction with strangers. The mass of people walking in the park came to life. All kinds of life. Life that casually passes by. Life that engages and smiles at you and life that turns their eyes away from you in panic as soon as your eyes meet. Life in a disabled body that is the first to drop some coins in your box. Life in the form of a little kid that stops to look at you while his parents keep trying to get him to move on, life in the form of a parent that stops for their baby in the stroller to watch. Life in the form of gypsies giving you ‘compliments’, older women that eventually unfreeze their serious expression and smile back, teenagers that take turns in the challenge of walking over to give you a tip, people taking videos from far away or casually choosing to sit in the leaves near you. Lives coming together to demonstrate the infinite ways they can interact with each other, based on the infinite personal paths they’ve walked…
So if you’ve been thinking of new ways to get out of your comfort zone, why not try this? Pick something you enjoy that you can do in front of people, grab a friend and the last rays of autumn sunlight and head out in the park. I believe that when we open ourselves up to courage and expression in public, we not only break our own limitations and fears, but we also make it safer and more ‘normal’ for others to do so. And I believe the world needs more people being courage, playfulness and expression.
Love ya!
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