It takes courage to learn to dance.
It takes courage to learn to do anything new.
It take courage to ask the unfamiliar voice on the telephone what you need to do in order to get started. It takes even more courage to show up for that first lesson.
It takes courage to learn to move your body in new ways and do things that will feel hopelessly awkward in the beginning.
It takes courage to try your best when you know that you will receive corrections and urged to try again and try harder.
It takes courage to return week after week, especially when it seems as though you're not making progress very quickly. Real progress rarely comes quickly.
It takes courage to attempt to learn something challenging in a room full of people, some of them perhaps more experienced, some of them potentially judgmental.
It takes courage to ask questions. Is this a reasonable question, we might wonder, or are we simply admitting our ignorance and looking foolish?
It takes courage to undertake and repeat and repeat again the difficult, tedious, awkward exercises reauired to elevate a skill to a new level.
It takes courage to go out to the milongas and dance with people of different levels, with people who have studied different styles, and with people who might not be very patient.
It takes courage to endure rejection and criticism, especially when the criticism is unwarranted.
It takes courage to face the fear of making mistakes or "messing up" in public.
It takes courage to stick with something after a particularly difficult or humiliating experience, to figure out what went wrong and to learn how to have things go better the next time.
It takes courage to admit when something isn't working when you thought initially that it was going well.
It takes courage to see ourselves clearly and honestly, the good and the bad.
It takes courage to admit our limitations and accept our weaknesses. And then to work on those weaknesses.
It takes courage to ask for help.
It takes courage to take guidance and to act upon it with steadfast conviction.
It takes courage to grow, to advance, to evolve.
It takes courage to embrace openly.
It takes courage to improvise.
It takes courage to express oneself freely.
It takes courage to share responsibility with a partner.
It takes courage to experience the intimacy of connection and partnership.
It takes courage to tango.
It takes courage to improvise.
It takes courage to express oneself freely.
It takes courage to share responsibility with a partner.
It takes courage to experience the intimacy of connection and partnership.
It takes courage to tango.
I applaud anyone who musters the courage to take that first lesson.
I applaud anyone who maintains the courage to keep working, to keep pressing forward toward a challenging goal.
I applaud anyone who survives one of those inevitable, gut-wrenching milonga experiences where nothing goes right, and then comes back out again in a day or week and discovers that all is not lost, that the unfortunate night was an outlier, a one-time event.
There is no tango without courage.
Without courage, there's no connection, no communication, no intimacy.
Without courage, there's no interpretation, expression, no improvisation.
Without courage, there's no exploration, experimentation, or discovery.
Without courage, there's no risk, and without risk, there can be no reward.
Without courage, there's no risk, and without risk, there can be no reward.
Have courage.
Let go of the fears that hold you back.
Lose yourself in the dance.
Because if you can't lose, you'll never know how it feels to win.
And if you can't let go, you'll never go anywhere.
Dare to dance.
Dare to grow.
Dare to connect.
Dare to express.
Dare to be who you really are.
Dare to tango.
¡Buena suerte amigos, y muchas gracias!
Daniel
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