“Your dance is your dance,” he said, a long time ago.
“You should be the same all the time, whether you're dancing with a beginner or a good dancer. It doesn't matter what the lead is. Your dance belongs to you,” she said, a long time ago.
“No matter what happens, you know who you are,” someone else said quite recently. “And you can get back to that.”
One day, recently, all my dreams came true. And not one single one of them was what I had told myself my dreams were. It turns out we tell ourselves scripted dreams formed from bits and pieces of the outside, conscious world, patchworks of other people's patterns. But real dreams come from the inside, subconscious world, and know nothing of how things “should” be or what is “possible” (let alone “appropriate”).
I didn't know such days were allowed to happen in real life! I had a peaceful round warm feeling inside. “I've had this day,” I thought, smiling. “That's enough.”
So I was stunned when I had another day when all my dreams came true. And then...another one! Suddenly I was living in this alternate universe where just about every day, all my dreams came true, as if for the first time. How was that Even Possible.
For the last few years I've been living my perfect life. I've been living what's true for me, and it's become a habit, albeit one that requires daily courage to maintain. Because of this, life has transformed into an endless series of treats (which is what I always said it was anyway), and I kept assuming it would come to an abrupt halt at any minute, because nobody is allowed to be so consistently, fundamentally happy. Bad things happen, but the baseline is set at a level of deep personal contentment I didn't know was legal in the US. And then lately...things have gotten even better.
Which is not to say I never experience negative emotions. Lately I've known grief that knocked the wind out of me. But...it didn't matter! I felt momentary pain so great I thought I would throw up or faint or die, anything to relieve the ice pick hacking me to bits inside. But even in the middle of it all, I could feel that it was a fleeting state that didn't affect my underlying peace and happiness. The pain left much faster than it previously would have, and I, miraculously, found my inner grooviness intact.
It turns out, pain is irrelevant to happiness. Happiness exists independently of pain. Real happiness in the core goes on regardless of external events. Because real happiness, like real dreams, springs from the inside. So it doesn't matter what happens outside.
The lead can be whatever. It doesn't matter. Your experience belongs to you. Your story belongs to you.
Your happiness belongs to you.