As I've mentioned elsewhere on my blog, I was a ballerina in my life BC (before children). When you spend 20 years doing one thing, it's no wonder it works it's way deeply into your subconscious. I have learned a lot from my ballet dreams. I've learned how much I value being a mother. I've learned how our bodies facilitate and streamline learning. And I've learned about soul-satisfying success.
A few weeks back I dreamed I was performing a lead in some ballet. The performance had gone well and I was in my dressing room preparing to leave the theater as I listened to the last strains of the music. Suddenly it occurred to me that I'd forgotten to perform the coda - the last piece after a pas de deaux and solo. Though I rushed to the stage, I'd already removed my costume and make-up and there was no way I was making it back to finish what I'd left undone.
It's not unlikely that I dreamed this because I did, in fact, forget to appear for a finale in one performance. Thankfully, I was NOT dancing a leading role at that time. But the panic as I realized my mistake was real, and apparently lives on in my subconscious.
What happened next in my dream was instructive. The ballet was over. My bosses came on to the stage and I was officially in big trouble. Though I realized they had forgotten to teach me the ending to the ballet, I was the no-show performer who had let the audience down, and they were taking the part from me. I might have fought with them, or blamed them for their oversight. I might have lashed out at other dancers, who were standing gloating in the wings, for not reminding me and letting me prepare to leave. Instead, as the theater cleared, I labored to learn and perfect what I had never learned and what I would now never perform. Though my dream performance was done, though my dream role had been taken from me, I still wanted to finish it all, as well as I could. For my own sake. For my own inner peace. I realized when I woke up and processed the dream, that the determination I felt at the end was all about soul-satisfying success.
Soul-satisfying success is self-defined. It may not be to great heights. It isn't about a crowd or approval. It's about not giving up 'til we've done something as well as we care to do it, just for the satisfaction of knowing we can. We can pursue soul-satisfying success in all sorts of endeavors. More recently than ballet, I struck out at every at-bat I had filling in for a better player at a local soft-ball game. My team won anyway, but my satisfaction didn't come 'til I'd gone home after the game and drilled hitting til I could hit the ball. Winning didn't do it for me. Connecting with the ball, even after the moment to do any good for the team had passed, did.
I love homeschooling because our kids have the freedom to pursue soul-satisfying success. If we let it, homeschooling engenders a whole new attitude about accomplishment. In school, kids' learning is timed, measured, graded. Even in team sports and dance classes, parents pull kids out or discourage them from participation when they don't make the cut or get the part they want. Homeschooling, we may discover our children want to be great at something no one cares about and no one will see. Mostly, there aren't other adults or kid peer groups to impress OR disappoint. There isn't a timer or schedule that dictates we move on before we want to. We can opt out of agendas that dictate how much and what our kids know by when. We can let them listen to their own hearts and find those things they wish to be great at, and be at peace with other things that don't speak to their souls. In my experience, doing so brings great satisfaction in parenting. That feeling becomes what measures accomplishment, instead of what I can list about my kifs or hold up and show off. And it's a good-for-the-soul feeling too!
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