Dyslexia, Darkness and The Defiant Dancing Spirit: Lessons Of Light From A Dancing Little Boy
The Boy Can Dance
Recently I posted a video on Facebook of our youngest child, Aviv (age 10) in his first dance competition. I posted it with reservation as I do not like to participate in perpetuating what I call the "shiny happy people false Facebook reality." None of us lead lives as pretty and polished as presented on Facebook. Posting about the tropical vacations, RV mountain excursions (that's our shtick), the perfect brunches on Father's Day, or the thousand other, wonderful life experiences is misleading. Yes, we should absolutely celebrate and share our victories and joyous occasions. However, we all know that lives are not only lived in the light, but in shadows and darkness, and it seems to me that when we only post about the light, we tend to alienate others, and frankly distance ourselves from our darkness and experiencing true light - the light which the Kabbalists say only, ever comes out of the dark.
With that said, I did post about Aviv for one reason - what you'll see in the video is not simply the light of a charismatic, gifted, confident, and celebrated dancer that you'll see on stage. What you'll actually witness is the light described by the mystics, the kind that comes not in beams, but in shattered shards. Each jagged shard must be painfully worked for, every piercing piece must be danced with blood, sweat, and tears. Yes, the boy's dance is the dance of light, but a light which he paid a heavy, painful, and lonely price.
Dancing In Darkness
Aviv was three years old when we decided to move him and the rest of our family to a mountaintop in the north of Israel. We were told that "it would be hard for the older kids to learn the language and acculturate. However, the younger kids, no sweat, they'll be up and running in no time. That's just how little kids are built."
As we experienced, however, this may be true for most kids, but Aviv is not most kids. After three years he was deeply struggling academically, socially, and not surprisingly emotionally as a consequence. He wasn't learning Hebrew. He wasn't learning anything as he was pretending to understand his teachers (as it was all in Hebrew) and hardly understood a word. Imagine, all day, every day, faking it: faking the language, faking fitting into the culture (Aviv was a dancer in a rough and tumble machismo culture which just added to the alienation and isolation), faking happiness and ultimately faking life. He was not only failing behind his Israeli contemporaries but losing his English, three years behind his American classmates when we returned home. Worst of all, other kids were giving up on him, frustrated by his inability to communicate to the point that Aviv's sister would report that during lunch Aviv would sit alone. During recess, he would play alone. Eventually, we discovered that Aviv had Dyslexia and was caught between languages, and as a result, caught between worlds. So, to save our son, we packed our bags and returned to America to focus him on English.
““If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.””
Dancing To His Own Drummer
Fast forward to last week and the video you can watch for yourself. What you see is a gifted, talented, and determined young man to be sure. However, make no mistake about it, isn't only the gifts, talents, and determination around dance that are so impressive. What is so impressive about this young man goes back to that lonely corner of a playground in a country that was foreign to him, immersed in a language he didn't understand, and surrounded by contemporaries who did not care for him and literally did not see him. If they did, they would have seen that in that corner of the playground, day in and day out as reported by his sister, Aviv was rarely sitting and feeling sorry for himself. Rather, he was surviving, even thriving, doing the one thing he knew how to do better than anyone else, the only thing he loved to do above everything else: he was dancing - dancing for his soul.
His sister would say that it was weird to see him dancing without any music, but she was wrong. What she didn't hear like his classmates didn't see, is best summed up in the words of Henry David Thoreau:
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
Aviv heard in the corner of that playground a different drummer, his own drummer. He had the courage and vision to step to the beat of that drummer, and even if he couldn't keep pace with his companions in the classroom, they most certainly could not and can not keep pace with him in dance. Although he may not have been seen at age 3, 4, or 5, last week, others saw it, his contemporaries saw it, and the judges saw it awarding him a scholarship not only because the kid can dance, but because that dance is the dance of light born out of darkness, a dance which Dr. Viktor Frankl called, the defiant power of the human spirit.
All Kids Can Dance
“This isn’t simply about Aviv, but all of our children who live their lives in the shadows because they don’t fit in on the playground.”
Watch Aviv & His Defiant Dancing Spirit
This isn't simply about Aviv, but all of our children who live their lives in the shadows because they don't fit in on the playground. It's for all of those kids who have known more darkness than light in their short, difficult lives. It's for all of us adults, challenging us to look at our assumptions about what is "normal." We must rethink our educational systems which focus on the neck up. Our children are more than just heads that happen to have bodies. We must also empower their painting hands, stimulate their dancing feet, help them cultivate their character, and encourage them to open up and share their hearts. Above all, we must cultivate and celebrate their defiant power of the human spirit to ascend out of those shadows, earn their place on the stage, and have the courage, faith, and resolve, like Aviv, to step to the music they, and they alone, hear, however measured or far away!
Here’s to my Dyslexic, determined and defiant dancer. Keep on defying the naysayers, the odds, and the darkness. Thank you for showing us all what it means to dance out of the shadows and into the light, and for teaching us the meaning of the defiant power of the dancing spirit. You are a source of inspiration, love and light.
Your proud Abba (daddy)!