Dance to Your Own Beat
Don’t let people manipulate you
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You have a tempo, a unique beat like a fingerprint. But a partner might want you to change your groove. Stay true to yourself, though. Consider whether your relationship builds you up or stifles your soul’s music.
“Stop! For goodness’ sake. Don’t rap out your beat on my arm.”
That’s what my thirty, forty, or fifty-year-old self would have told him (the guy I was seeing) if it was happening to her rather than the eighteen-year-old me.
Everyone sways and taps to an internal beat, their own interpretation of what they hear. If someone, however, tries to force you to dance to their rhythm, and it’s not a good match for yours, your entire being screams “no!”
We were in a bar with live music. It was blues — or jazz, perhaps; I forget. The atmosphere was cool and the temperature hot, and I would have been happy had my guy not insisted on placing his hand over mine and tapping me like a typewriter, wrenching out a tune that didn’t harmonize with my experience.
At other times, and I recall this part well, he put his hands around my waist and physically twisted me to his rhythm.
From a distance, we looked like a united couple. The kind who were relaxed and enjoying themselves.
But my heart and my feet, my entire body, wanted to do its own thing, unhampered by someone else’s control.
I know now; it was a sign. We moved to a different drumbeat and would never dance in harmony.
Now, when I see couples entwined as they listen to music, one shifting the other around like a puppet, I wonder, are they really hearing the same call, the same beat, or is one of them too ‘nice’ or shy to speak out and find their own rhythm?
When you discover your tempo and claim it, refusing to dance to a different beat than yours, you stop letting people manipulate you.
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