The Gift from the Sea that Keeps on Giving OR Why My Social Self is taking Rumba Lessons

I had a “Light Bulb  Moment” today

My friend (and coach), Lynn Hess was giving me the Passion Test (which I highly recommend) and had asked me to answer the question “I’ll know my life is ideal when I …”  One of the ten answers was “I am in a committed relationship with a really amazing like-minded man who ‘gets’ me.”  What does that relationship look like?  She did say “ideal” so to explain, I read her a passage from one of my favorite books, Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  In this passage Lindbergh uses dance as a metaphor for relationships and having been a dancer in my 20s I completely relate to this.

“A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules.  …. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding…”

She’s writing, of course about a relationship between two people “being able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.”

The Light Bulb Moment

This is where the light bulb went on!

I have to be able to dance a solo before I’ll ever be a great partner in a pas de deux!

My Social and Essential Selves must learn to “dance well together.” Martha Beck introduces the Essential and Social selves in Finding Your Own North Star and expands on the concept in Steering by Starlight.

Essential Self. What we are born with, your overall sense of who you are.  It is essential because first “… it is the essence of your personality, and second, you absolutely need it to find your North Star.

Social Self. The part of you that developed in response to pressures from the people around you, including everyone from your family to your first love to the pope.”  The part of you that responds to the word “should.”

So if my Social Self insists on going clubbing because that’s what EVERYBODY is doing, but my Essential Self would rather stay home and rumba in the living room … there’s conflict.  The different rhythms of the two selves can cause feelings that are, according to Martha,

….  fraught with discontent, anxiety, frustration, anger, boredom, numbness, or despair, (because) your social and essential selves are not in sync.

So, before I start tripping the light fantastic with someone else, I need to show my Social Self how to rumba!  My Essential Self is the one born with the innate sense of my own natural rhythm.  And if my Social Self will close her eyes and relax into it, my two Selves will learn to be a great dance team.

… so, come on Selves – let’s learn to Rhumba!

Darlin’ now I’m still doing the rhumba baby
I can’t seem to quit
If my mama catches us doing the rhumba
My Mama would just pitch a fit
But I can’t help myself, it’s much bigger than me
If I were you, I would hang onto a rhumba girl like me

- Nicollette Larson “Rhumba Girl”