I have forgiven the tango.

It was up in the air for awhile, there. I wasn’t sure, after that terrible, tearful night at the tango club, whether my brain could handle learning something new. I am drowning in the information from school, so many tests still left before I am finished, and I was struggling with remembering the steps during my tango lessons. I wondered if I had made a mistake taking on such a huge endeavor, because it felt like one more thing I sucked at and knew so little about and needed to pay attention to. But I am so glad I stuck with it, because I have fallen in love with this dance.

The class I am in now is called tango turns, and it builds on all of the basic steps we learned in the beginning session. Everyone has improved, and there is so much less stumbling and shuffling. We’re dancing now, moving with, if not grace, at least some fluidity and cohesion. We still crash into each other and step on everyone’s toes, but we know how to move through that now, how to find our place in the music and keep on dancing. And even though I love the movements, feeling my body create visual music, it’s the people that truly make this a beautiful thing. See, we’re really not very good. We’re terrible, all of us. We look like a group of lumbering rhinos with our heavy feet and stiff, inelegant shoulders. But there is something so hopeful about our determination and perseverance. We’ve all stuck with it these many weeks, not because we’re any good, but because we enjoy it. We want to be there, we want to learn, and this is such a rare and precious thing in a world of have-to’s and musts, obligations that we begrudgingly fill.

One thing that frustrates me about this world is this need people feel to create some sort of puffed-up version of themselves to present to others. It’s like we pad the air around us with false confidence and pretend strength, because to show any sign of weakness would mean certain disaster. You must show people that you know who you are and what you’re doing at all times, because if you don’t the other birds will sense your vulnerability and peck you to pieces. And I think this is one of the greatest fallacies: the idea that strength equals success. It may be true that the stronger you seem to other people, the less they mess with you, but that sounds lonely to me. I kind of like to get messed with once in a while. It seems to me that the more I pretend to know, the less open I am to actually learning something. Think about the body language we use when we say the words “I don’t know.” We shrug our shoulders, and hold our arms out in front of us with palms facing up. Waiting for something new to be placed in our hands.

Tango requires this openness. You invite someone into your personal space, you press your body against theirs and clasp hands. You move together and follow each other, and the dance becomes your conversation. Watching all of us in class tonight trying to learn this new language was an unbelievably moving experience. The eagerness and willingness that these people have to let go of their comfortable boundaries and step into something entirely new is astounding. It makes me believe in so many things. If these people that I go to class with- the man with one arm, the giant Italian who wears suspenders printed with music notes, the meek little Chinese man who barely speaks any English- if they can learn to dance, then maybe there’s hope for this broken, mixed-up planet after all. I have seen it with my own eyes: grown-up people throwing caution to the wind, letting someone into their arms, and learning to move with the music.

Great things are possible, if only we rhinos can shrug our shoulders once in awhile, hold out our hands, and wait patiently for the answer to come.