It’s Thanksgiving (Almost)!

You know.

That time of year when Americans come together to do battle with the groaning board, avoid discussing politics, and … oh yeah … give thanks.

I mean, it’s right there in the name!

And even though today was a Bad Ballet Day, I have a lot to be grateful for this year.

I’m not going to enumerate all the things. That would take forevvvverrrr. Instead, I’m going to focus on the weirdest thing I’m grateful for. So here it is:

I’m grateful for being totally out of my depth.

Struggle Is How We Grow

When we’re out of our depth, we struggle.

In the moment, that sometimes feels awful. In fact, it frequently feels awful. Especially when you’ve taken a huge leap from being a big fish in a small pond to being the smallest (and most incompetent) fish in a big pond.

And yet, in this context, struggle means opportunity. When you’re at the bottom of the climb, there’s nowhere to go but up. The challenge is figuring out how to do that.

It’s too facile to say that struggle means growth. Sometimes, struggle means that either someone or something is impeding your progress (you might even be impeding it yourself).

But I think it’s pretty fair to say that growth means struggle. Not all of the time, but at least some of the time.

We grow stronger physically by making a zillion infinitesimal tears in our muscles. We grow stronger emotionally by making a zillion infinitesimal tears in our hearts.

We improve our skills not by working on the things we’ve already mastered (though that’s important, too), but by cracking away at the things we haven’t mastered yet.

Struggle and Arise

Our roughest spots are where we can improve the most (and, sometimes, the fastest). It just so happens that working on them is often frustrating AF.

So the next time I’m in the studio feeling frustrated and like I should just pack it in and consider a career in, like, anything other than dance, I will try to remind myself that I’m frustrated because I’m struggling, and I’m struggling because I’m growing and learning.

And I’ll try to be grateful for the struggle, because it means I’ve been granted an amazing opportunity.

I’m learning how to be a dancer at a new level. Mr D chose to roll the dice on me, and I’m immensely grateful for that, and for all the guidance of my many teachers and friends who helped me reach this point.